


Loud Pipes Save Lives

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, game of thrones
Genre: Detective Stark!, District Attorney Margaery Tyrell, F/F, F/M, Gen, Modern AU, Motorcycles, NYC, POLITICS!, Racebending, ace representation, and hot women riding them, exposition!, multi-ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-02-12 22:45:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 35
Words: 67,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2127309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an AU set in contemporary NYC.  Sansa Stark is an idealistic young detective investigating the activities of an all-girl vigilante biker gang featuring some of our favorite Westerosi ladies including Asha Greyjoy, Daenarys Targaryen, and the enigmatic woman pulling the strings, known simply as "Empress."  There are politics plotlines involving the Lannister & Baratheon families, with Margaery Tyrell as the ambitious young district attorney trying to make a mark at the highest levels of city government.  Ambitious and challenging, this has been a joy to work on and I hope you decide to ride along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meet Detective Stark

She peered upwards into the ceiling of the closet, not sure what she was expecting to find, but peering nonetheless. Her partner, a blond, butch slab of a woman, stood a few feet behind her, staring at her back. “Stark?”

She didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything remarkable in this closet, she thought. But she kept staring up into it anyway.  This entire neighborhood had been built by the Germans in the 1920s and the buildings were so weirdly made; they were almost nice brownstones like the one she’d grown up in, but often had uselessly shallow closets like this one, along with absurdly high ceilings, bay windows where bay windows didn’t quite belong, dumbwaiters, air shafts that connected the bathroom to the bathroom on the floor above it so that it was basically like sitting in the same room with your neighbor and listening to them piss, or cry, or do whatever else they did in the bathroom, and those inexplicably-placed little “troll doors.”  She made a mental note to read a little more about what those were supposed to be for.  She slipped a glove on, tugged at the chain hanging down. A bare bulb convulsed to life above her head.

“What are you looking for?” her partner persisted.

“I’m not sure,” she said, her lips pressed firmly together as she stared into its corners, her clear eyes searching every inch.

“Well, when you figure it out, let me know, so I can look at something besides your backside.”

She’d take that as flirtation from any one of the other dykes at the station house, but Bree didn’t act like any of them, although she did sometimes socialize with them. Stark had never seen Bree flirt with anyone, actually, and maybe that’s why they were a good team. Just the work. No distractions. “I’m married to my job,” Stark would say, when the inevitable questions came from friends, relatives, guys on the street who wouldn’t take no for an answer. People couldn’t accept that an attractive woman in her late twenties might not be interested in dating, marriage, or any of the rest of it.

“It’s just weird,” Stark went on, her serious eyes wandering along the floor of the closet, along the molding underneath the door. “The body’s in the tub, but the tub’s empty. She was on those antidepressants, but if it was suicide, who tries to kill themselves in an empty tub? I think I want forensics to spend a little time on that table by the kitchen window… it was kind of a mess, which doesn’t add up because the rest of the place is neat.”

“And that means you’re staring into the bedroom closet because…?”

“Because-“

_Thud.  Crash!_

They both dashed into the kitchen to find an unpleasantly familiar face. A guy in a tweed jacket and jeans, beady brown eyes, set in an otherwise good-looking face, much of it shadowed under the bill of a peat cap. In the “pre-war” kitchen (which war, exactly?) with its ancient appliances, taking pictures with his iPhone camera.

“Hunt, this is a closed crime scene, and you need to get out,” Bree said forcefully, striding over to him and placing a hand firmly, you could really say roughly, on his shoulder. She was a good head or two taller than he was, and probably could have crushed him with her bare hands if the situation demanded it.

Stark was right on her heels. Her eyes darted over to where he’d been standing and she saw his shoe print in the faint dusting of powder on the floor near the window. Forensics hadn’t been in yet but she had a feeling it might be coke, and this damned hack reporter from a local tabloid not fit to line a litter box was leaving a record of his Florsheims in it.

It wasn’t that Stark hated journalists. It was that she loved them. She’d been one herself, before things went south. And this guy seemed like he was out to singlehandedly make the entire profession look bad.  The New York Post was famous for its lurid headlines, like the one after the Tonya Harding incident, which featured a picture of the figure skater with a too-wide grin, and the copy: "BODYGUARD FINGERS TONYA."  The paper that Hunt wrote for, The Borough Record, made the Post look like the love child of Bill Moyers and Katherine Graham.

“Hey come on,” he protested, “freedom of the press! The Fourth Estate and all that jazz! Come on, Detective,” he shot a phony pleading look in Stark’s direction, “you of all people should appreciate that.” Stark had come to develop a sort of affection for the buzzsaw quality of the Queens accent after years of working this precinct, but from Hyle Hunt’s mouth, it just made her teeth itch.

Stark had only been a detective for a couple of years, but she already had a rep as being extremely meticulous about her crime scenes and reports. “I’ll tell you what I appreciate, Hunt.  I appreciate a cold glass of white wine or better yet, a mimosa.  I appreciate a few bars of Claude deBussy when I'm in the right mood, and I really appreciate those unloved Willem deKooning paintings of women.  You know the ones with the big eyes and square heads?  I love them.  But I really, _really_ appreciate, more than anything on earth, when _morons_ don’t snoop around fresh crime scenes, tampering with my evidence and then trying to pass off their sensationalist half-information as reporting.” She pointed with cool fury at the shoeprint. “Do you know what that powder on the floor is, that you felt the need to leave your autograph on?”

Hunt smiled and shook his head.

“Yeah, and neither do we. Forensics hasn’t even been here yet. There’s police tape over the door.”

“That means stay the fuck out,” Bree interjected helpfully.

“You want information, call someone at the precinct.” She waved irritably at him. “Bree, show him out.”

“Can I call _you_ for information, Detective? Your hair looks really pretty when you wear it up like that,” he badgered as Bree dragged him toward the door of the third-floor walkup. “Maybe you could help me with my story and I could help you with-“

“Hunt-“ Bree warned him. “Don’t.”

He grinned. “Come on, Detective, I’m just a humble journalist trying to make his way in the world,” he went on cheerfully, even as his feet were only sort of touching the floor.

Stark decided she’d had about all she could take. She marched over, shoved him loose of Bree’s grip, grabbed his collar, and socked him in the jaw, sending him staggering backward through the police tape which snapped as if he’d crossed a finish line, and leaving him sprawled out on the linoleum in the hallway, groaning, probably more in surprise than in pain.

Bree shook her head and put both her hands up to her face. “Sansa, what the hell? Selmy is going to fucking suspend you.”

Sansa’s breath had quickened only a bit, and she opened and closed her hands a couple of times to make sure she hadn’t messed anything up when she landed her blow. “Screw it. I could use a vacation.”

*******

It was true. She and her partner had busted up a local sex trafficking ring a few months back, in an investigation that had mostly flown under the radar of their captain, not to mention the older, more experienced detectives who had trained them. There'd been a heartbreaking number of minors among them, mostly girls but a few boys too. It was the kind of bust that got a couple of young detectives a lot of new attention, and not always the kind they wanted. Sure, they got commendations, they got their faces on the local news, they got a phone call from the new mayor, who’d just been sworn in. But they also had older detectives suddenly feeling threatened and hostile, and they started attracting cheapo tabloid vulture “reporters” like flies. She was not sorry for one second that they’d made the bust, but the fallout was sometimes a lot to deal with, and her normally diplomatic, even temperament had decided to stay in bed today while Detective Stark was out saving the city. By the time she was sitting in Captain Selmy’s office, she was practically praying for a suspension. A nice long one.  Punching someone in the face, even someone as obnoxious as Hyle Hunt, who was pretty much asking for it, wasn't really her M.O.

Selmy's office was dark and messy, and Stark guessed that it probably hadn't changed in thirty years and half a dozen captains.  If someone had told her that they'd shot episodes of Cagney & Lacey in here, she'd believe it.  It was all green and grey steel office furniture and squeaky desk chairs, with stacks of folders on either side of the desk.  He basically had to do a "Moses parting the waters" thing with the wall of paper and folders in order to clear a channel down the middle so that they could look at each other while they spoke.

She'd walked past the bull pen to a round of applause (nobody in that room liked Hyle Hunt) and was now sitting uneasily in front of him, wondering how things were going to unfold. He was trying to be stern, looking at Sansa Stark with the closest thing she’d ever seen to a twinkle in his eye. He scratched his beard, then scratched it some more, looking at her for a long minute before saying anything.

“I have to admit, Stark, I didn’t know you had it in you,” he finally remarked dryly.

“Er, thank you, sir?”

“You’re a damn good detective, but you’ve never been the aggressive type. It’s nice to see you can let one fly once in a while.” He sighed wearily. “Now I got Detective Tarth’s report, but why don’t you fill in the blanks for me.”

“Very simple, sir. He was tampering with my crime scene.”

“And?”

“He also tried to hit on me. Badly.”

"Did he."

“That’s not the worst part, sir.”

“Oh?”

“He called himself a journalist, sir,” she deadpanned.

Selmy sat back and allowed himself a chuckle. “Is that all?”

Selmy was clearly amused. She hadn’t done it to raise her stock with him, but it seemed to be having that side effect. “Well, look, Stark. That little shit deserved it. I’m sure it’s not the first time someone’s punched him in his weasel face and probably won’t be the last. But, he’s going to file a complaint if he hasn’t already, and if we’re going to keep this and you out of court on brutality charges, I have to make like I give a shit. So, you’re suspended, with pay, for two weeks.”

“You’re not going to reassign Bree while I’m out, right?”

He smiled knowingly. “Don’t worry, Stark. Your partner will still be your partner when you get back. I wouldn’t want to tear you two apart.”

She gave him a puzzled look, which elicited more weird, knowing smiles from him. “We’re not a couple, sir, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“Okay, Stark.” Smirking, and more smirking. “That’s fine. You’re dismissed.”


	2. The D.A.'s Special Request

The Commissioner’s secretary, a bright-eyed woman of fiftyish, looked up from her computer. “How are you today, Miss Tyrell?” she said, briskly but not brusquely.

Margaery gave her a sparkly smile, that disarming smile that wound so many around her finger, that disarming smile that made witnesses on the stand relax so thoroughly that they routinely incriminated themselves before she’d even really gotten warmed up. “Come on, Candace. My friends call me Maggie.”

“I’ll start calling you Maggie when I’ve had cocktails at your penthouse,” Candace parried.

“You stop by anytime, Candace. The Commissioner has my address,” the dimpled brunette replied with a cheery wink.

Candace gave her a smile that said she knew Margaery was full of shit, but that she liked her anyway.

Margaery Tyrell exuded confidence. And well she should. She was a knockout. She was young. She came from a lineage of power; her Air Force veteran brothers had both served a couple of terms in Congress, her father Mace had been minority leader of the State Senate for almost a decade, and her grandmother Olenna was New York’s first female mayor back in the late 60’s and early 70’s. While nobody would have called her grandmother revolutionary at the time, it was generally acknowledged that she held the city together during a time of local and national turbulence. What would only come to be acknowledged later were the many programs she quietly shepherded through the City Council to support women’s access to birth control, increase funding for food stamp programs, and other things that might have been considered small-bore initiatives, but paved the way for bigger things.  There were a lot of plaques in buildings around New York with Olenna Tyrell's name on them.

Margaery also came from considerable wealth; the Tyrells came into their money in the Roaring Twenties, when her grandfather sat on the board of JP Morgan, which by some standards made them “new money,” but they took to it like Kennedys. And in truth, they were rather like New York State’s own Kennedys; a clan of striking, intelligent, liberal-minded political types who knew how to wear their mystique, and who all carried, nestled somewhere within their layers of rabid ambition, a sincere desire to do a bit of good.  

It would be easy to assume that Margaery had what she had because of her family connections, or her good looks, or both.  Anyone who knew her, though, knew she was intelligent, driven, insightful, and persuasive –or manipulative, if you felt ungenerous. But she had graduated Yale Law School ahead of schedule despite also helming the Law Review in her final year and, after switching from public defender to prosecutor, was one of the most effective prosecutors the city had had in a while. That’s how you get to be the youngest Manhattan district attorney in history.

Candace glanced at the schedule. “The Commissioner’s not expecting you.”

“I know. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by. I need to run something by him. Is he here?”

Candace glanced at her, then back at the schedule. “He’s indisposed.”

“In a meeting?” Margaery persisted.

A pause. “Yes.”

“Because it’s funny, indisposed is the euphemism my mother used to use when someone was in the restroom,” she pursued, with the same sparkly little smile. “Is he in the restroom?”

Candace gave an irritated sigh. “No, I told you. He’s in a meeting.”

“With who?”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Candace protested.

“What?” Margaery asked innocently.

“Don’t you even try that thing you always pull—“ She made some vague imitation of Margaery’s voice. “ _Oh, who’s he in a meeting with? Oh, the president of the United Way? Oh, I’m best friends with him, I’ll just stick my head in and say hello!_ And then you go traipsing by me like I’m not even here and—“

Margaery breezed past the desk. “OK then, Candace, I’ll spare you. I won’t ask who he’s meeting with.”

“And then he gives me a hard time after you leave!” Candace called after her.

Margaery pushed the heavy wooden door open to find him sitting at his desk, on the telephone, scotch in one hand. “Of course I appreciate it,” he was saying wearily, “but I’m not a magician. I can’t just— ” He looked up and saw Margaery peeking around the door and looked pained. “Listen, I’m sorry, but the District Attorney is here right now. I didn’t realize we had an appointment at this time. I’ll call Patricia for your schedule and we can have a longer discussion about it.”

He hung up.

“Let me guess,” she hazarded. “Deputy Mayor?”

He huffed. “Is it that obvious?”

“She’s a fascinating woman,” Margaery observed, “but she does seem to torment you, a little, Commissioner.”

"So do you."  He ran a hand back through his graying blonde hair and sighed. “We don't have anything scheduled now. You did an end run around Candace again?”

She smiled. “Guilty.” She slid into the green Victorian chair in front of his desk. “I know when she’s lying about you being in a meeting.” He looked particularly put-upon as she said this. “Look, I did you a favor, I got you off the phone with the Deputy Mayor,” she pointed out.

Commissioner Mormont sighed again. He had a perpetual world-weariness to him that Margaery found at once sad, noble and endearing. In small doses, of course. He held up the drink in his hand. “Scotch?” he offered.

“I haven’t had lunch yet,” she demurred, “but thanks.”

“So,” he said, “now that we’ve exchanged pleasantries, what is it that you need from me?”

“Well, it’s this sudden flurry of gang activity.”

He nodded. “The bikers, right?”

“Yes. I want to put a cop on it.”

“We have several cops on it. They’ve been active in a few different precincts.”

“Yes, but,” she said slowly, “I want to put a particular cop on it.”

“Who?”

“Detective Stark. Sansa Stark, 104th precinct.”

“Queens?” He looked suddenly wary. “The one from the sex trafficking bust a couple of months ago?”

“Exactly. Can you work out transferring her to a precinct that’s handling one of these biker investigations? I was thinking Midtown South?”

He hedged. “I’m not sure.” Then, “Why do you want her on this?”

“I’ve been watching her for a while. I think she has potential. Plus her case files on the Woodbine bust were...immaculate. Thorough. I wish all my police reporting looked like that.” Margaery leaned forward, fixing him with that earnest stare that often got her what she wanted with him. “There isn’t some reason why you don’t want her working this case, is there?”

He paused. “No.”

“Excellent!  So I can have this one?”

He seemed to consider her for a minute. He was clearly making some kind of calculus about whether denying her was worth the trouble that this move could cause him, but he didn’t seem disposed toward telling her what that trouble might be. “I’ll make a couple calls.”

She smiled brightly. “Thanks, Jorah. I’ll have my office check in with you on Monday.  Oh! And do me a favor and don't drop my name, if you can help it.” She stood up. “I’ll take you up on that scotch next time, I promise.”

"Take care, Maggie."

She glanced at her watch as she glided out the door. It was ten-thirty a.m.


	3. Empress Makes a Pick

_“When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.”_

_–Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_

 

She saw the redhead before the others did. Somehow she knew that the bike parked out front, a beat-to-shit metallic-black Ducati Monster 696, belonged to her. It wasn’t a bad bike, if you were a beginner, or just broke. She’d have to be upgraded at some point, but right now, it was the girl that mattered, not the bike. Empress was looking for a particular kind of flash in the eye, and the girl had it.

She was without question a real specimen; she was drunk, and she was Scottish, which meant you if you were listening to her talk, you could only understand the word “fuck” and its variations; but since roughly every fifth word was “fuck,” you were sure to understand at least twenty percent of what she was saying. Empress wasn’t listening for that, though; she was listening for a particular fire in the girl’s belly, and she heard it from across the room. She reminded Empress a little of herself at that age, though she hadn’t been half as crazy as this one. Not back then.

This bar was a dump, perched in what polite Manhattanites would call the Upper Middle of Nowhere, and that was how Empress and her girls preferred it. It was Manhattan in only the most technical sense, as you’d never find any sharp-tongued socialites anywhere even thirty blocks south of here. The tops of the tables were more water stain than wood, the bartender was permanently in a state of angry despair, and the walls were still stained yellow from when you were allowed to smoke in bars in the city, which was a good decade ago at this point. Neon signs for cheap beers hovered in the blacked out windows and the occasional howl of sirens would come and go in the background. The jukebox was from before the dawn of time and contained a weird selection; half salsa, half hair metal, and for some reason, if you scrolled all the way down to one end, Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.”

The sparse crowd on this particular evening was favoring the hair metal, and unfortunately for everyone concerned, a drunk guy in a denim jacket and bandana was getting up to play the same Motley Crue song for the 12th time in the last hour. The redhead in the corner saw him getting up and immediately started shouting at him. It was clear that she was not in the mood to hear “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room” yet again.           

“Her,” Empress said calmly, watching with unbroken interest.

Arya, sitting her right and working on a Heineken, looked incredulous. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Watch.”

On Empress’s left, Asha sat quietly, observing with an interest that was probably coming from more than just curiosity as to Empress’s prediction. Her dark eyes were fixed on the redhead, and Empress knew she was already taking the girl’s clothes off in her head.

“We’re not picking out your next girlfriend, Asha,” Empress said evenly, without even looking at her. “Stay in the game, please.”

“I’m always in the game, stoosh,” Asha replied, with her musical Jamaican accent and perpetual cocky smirk.

That was mostly true. Asha _was_ almost always in the game. Equally ready for brawling or boning at a moment’s notice. “Stoosh yourself,” Empress rejoined calmly. “I know how to make a pick.”

“Ay, fucker!” the redhead was yelling to the guy, who was fishing through the pockets of his threadbare jacket, looking for more money to put in the jukebox. She lurched over to him, surprisingly light on her feet for how drunk she clearly was.

He, clearly about as drunk as she was, and looking like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, lolled his head to the side to look at her.

“I said,” she repeated emphatically, “if you put that fuckin’ Motley Crue shite on the fuckin’ jukebox one more _time,_ you’ll be [something Scottish] out your fuckin’ [something Scottish], okay?” The words were hard to pick out. But she grabbed hold of his collar with her free hand, to emphasize them anyway. The other hand was still holding a mostly-finished mug of beer.

His face turned from passive mean to active mean. “Bitch, I got no problem hittin’ a broad, alright? Take your fuckin’ hand off me, and let me put my goddamn song on, or I’ll lay your ass out.”

She seemed to take this as a challenge. “Oh, really? I’ll bet you [something Scottish] fuckin' [something Scottish] but I’m a bit tougher than that fuckin' eight year old you beat up for his milk money this morning.”

He shoved her off of him and raised his fists, blearily trying to stare past them at her face, which was lit with a kind of amused rage.

She knocked back the contents of the mug and then smashed it against the edge of the table next to her. At this point, the song stopped and there wasn’t another one cued up, so it fell quiet. The bartender grumbled loudly and started to reach under the bar. Empress and the girls knew what was under there.

It was escalating quickly.

Empress got up and waved them along with her. Asha grabbed the redhead’s arms and pinned them behind her. Arya shoved the guy back against a table. Empress stepped in between the guy and the redhead. She wasn’t that tall, and she wasn’t as young and fit as the girls, but she had a kind of authority. Even this drunk idiot could see it.

“I think everyone needs to settle down a little, don’t you?” she asked calmly.

“Hey, fuck you! She started it. Mind your fuckin’ business!” he protested. But he was looking back and forth between the women in front of him and trying to fathom his situation. There was a lot of black leather in this room.

“ _You_ started it with that shite song you keep playing!” the redhead shouted back, struggling against Asha’s grip.

“Take it easy, girlfriend,” Asha said in her ear, in a kind of croon, “We’re you’re friends out here, me and dem, ok?”

She stilled for a minute and glanced over her shoulder at Asha. She looked quizzical, but suddenly seemed to be enjoying her situation more. “Oh, hello,” she said casually, as if she’d just noticed her. As if it were an everyday thing that people introduced themselves by running up to her during a bar fight and pinning her arms behind her back.

Asha grinned at her, all white teeth and sly eyes.

Empress smiled mirthlessly and told the guy, “I can see, in that slow, drunken brain of yours, you’re trying to do the math to see if you can take the four of us. Let me explain your situation to you.” She gestured to Arya. “She… wins kickboxing tournaments on the regular. She,” she went on, gesturing to Asha, “is armed. And she,” she finished, pointing to the redhead, “is insane, apparently.”

He looked for a moment, processing it. Finally, he looked at her. “What about you? What do you do?”

“I make picks.”

He didn’t understand.

“You have a choice. You can get up, and you can leave, and nobody goes home with anything broken. Or, I go to the jukebox, and I pick. And if I get to pick, that means that you get your ass kicked with Blondie’s _Heart of Glass_ as the soundtrack. So, you pick, or else… I pick.”

The place was quiet. The bartender was holding still, waiting to see if he was going to need to take his twelve-gauge out from under the bar. The guy turned to him with an entreating look, but it wasn’t clear what he was even expecting him to do.

“I think you better go, Ace,” the bartender finally said.

Ace got up and stumbled out the door, cursing under his breath.

Asha finally let go of the girl’s wrists, but by that point, it was already clear that maybe she didn’t mind being restrained so much if it was Asha doing the restraining. She rubbed her palms on her jeans and turned around to get a good look, first at Asha, and then the rest of the party. “I coulda taken him fine, you know,” she began.

“Yes, I think you could have. But you didn’t have to,” Empress said. “What’s your name?”

“Ygritte,” she answered, tossing her hair back over her shoulders.

“Empress likes you,” Arya said.

“I like you,” Asha interjected.

“Empress!” Ygritte hooted, looking her up and down. “What happened, lass, was Queen taken and you didn’t care much for Admiral?”

Empress smiled a little. “Something like that.” She glanced over at the bar, where the bartender had gone back to listlessly running his dirty rag over its surface with a look of total futility and meaninglessness on his face. “Let’s go for a ride, Ygritte. I’d like to invite you to our little party. I think you belong there.”

“It’s not like some type o’ weird sexual shite, is it?” It was hard to tell if she was joking, or if it would have been a bad thing if it had been. Ygritte’s eyes were scanning the three of them with a growing curiosity.

“Not unless you want it to be,” Asha answered.

Ygritte didn’t exactly seem put off by Asha’s flirting.

Arya snorted and rolled her eyes.

“That’s your Monster out front, isn’t it?” Empress asked.

Ygritte nodded.

“You’re too drunk to ride,” Empress decided. “Ride with Asha. You can come back for the bike later… if you still want it.”


	4. Crippled Gadabouts

_"I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him."_

_–Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse_

 

Bran drank a lot of coffee. A _lot_ of coffee. Some people think they drink a lot of coffee, but they’d be mistaken. Bran showed up to long meetings like this with two venti lattes from Starbucks lined up in front of him, each spiked with two extra shots of espresso.

It was the only way he could stay awake. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in what was going on, or didn’t think it was important. This charity, Warriors’ Wheels, was pretty much his life at this point. It organized and sponsored wheelchair basketball programs in and around the tri-state area. It had started out being specifically for injured veterans, but was soon after expanded to include anyone, including people like him. Bran had lost both legs below the knee, shattered to pieces in a rock-climbing accident a few years back. And then he'd lost his father, within the space of a year. The wheelchair basketball wound up being his lifeline. First he was playing, then coaching, then organizing casual, friendly competitions with other similar leagues around the area. And now, he was sitting on the board.

Charities, and he knew this from a lifetime of privilege, loved to have the names of wealthy, influential families on their boards. And because he was already involved in the program, and had such a heartstring-tugging, made-for-tv-movie kind of story around it, naturally they badgered and pleaded until he agreed to do it.

But he didn’t have much of a gift for the dry side of charity life. There were a few bean-counters in the room, seated around the heavy oak table, a few earnest non-profit types with modest haircuts and inexpensive suits, and then him. After he got to talk about the programs he wanted to introduce, he had to sit and look at a series of pie charts on a whiteboard. Hence, the coffee.

Actually, there was one other person on the board who was sort of like him: Jamie Lannister.

Bran’s mother, Catelyn, never had a good word to say about any of the Lannisters. His sister had dated Jamie’s nephew Joffrey back in prep school, and from what Bran had heard, he’d been a real monster, but he never got much more detail than that. He just remembers his older brother Robb having to be restrained from going to kick the crap out of him.

Jamie’s sister Cersei never failed to make him a little depressed, even now. Bran had known her face from turning up at a lot of the same tony fundraisers. When he was about twelve, he’d actually had a bit of a crush on the older woman, because she was stunningly beautiful; tall, with spun-gold hair and when she wore it swept up, you could see how long her neck was and she made his heart stop. Then he once overheard her verbally abusing the help, and that pretty much ended that. Her voice had such a chilly snap, the memory of it still made him shiver, over a decade later.

But Jamie seemed alright. He was probably almost old enough to be Bran’s father, but he had an easy way about him that made Bran feel comfortable talking to him. He’d been sitting on this board for almost as long as Bran, and like Bran, he had a permanent injury that made for a tragic story that people liked to listen to for the angst-to-triumph inspiration of it.

As chart after chart flipped by, they made eye contact across the table, and Bran could see by the way he subtly widened his eyes, as if trying to prop them open, that Jamie wasn’t any more revved up about this part of things than he was. Bran tried not to smile, but his mouth quirked a bit.

By the end of the meeting, both of Bran’s coffees were finished.

As Jamie was walking out, Bran in his wheelchair caught up with him. “Jamie, wait a minute!” he called after him.

Jamie stopped by the elevator.

Bran wheeled up to him. “I hope those graphs meant more to you than they did to me.”

Jamie grinned broadly and shrugged. “Yeah, not so much.”

Bran’s eyebrows lifted. “But… don’t you sit on the board at Lyonsbank?”

“Yes, but that’s my father’s doing. That’s all I do with my life. I sit on the boards of things. Lyonsbank, this charity, that charity, the other… Doctors Without Borders, City Harvest, preservation committees….”

Bran laughed. “You don’t actually know anything about finance?”

“Not even a little,” he laughed. “I wait till they give me the bottom line; how big of a check do I have to convince my father to write, and how much of it will come from our money versus Lyonsbank’s money. I’m the PR man for the Lannister family and Lyonsbank.”

Bran shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true! I can’t even read a spreadsheet. I’m dyslexic, it’s a nightmare. So, there’s not much other use for a crippled gadabout,” he said cheerfully.

They grinned at each other for a moment. Bran collected himself. “Oh, hey, I just wanted to thank you for giving me that phone number. Bronn’s fantastic. I’ve been really feeling good since I started working with him.”

The last time the board had met, Jamie had suggested that Bran take fencing lessons privately from a teacher that he himself had been working with. Bronn specialized in working with people with disabilities or recovering from serious injuries. And although Bran had thought it was a weird idea, he’d been enjoying the sessions. They got his blood moving a bit. Unlike the kind of physical work it was to haul himself about for day to day things, it was enjoyable to do something that was primarily about a bit of physical élan. And he noticed that his upper body was feeling a little stronger too.

Jamie smiled. “I told you. He’s great.” He held up his left hand and waggled his fingers. “I’m still not as good as I was in my championship days, and I probably won’t be, but at least I can still do it a bit.”

Bran pointed at Jamie’s right hand, which was a very convincing-looking prosthetic. “They did such a nice job on that, you’d think they could make one that could hold a lightweight foil or épée.”

Jamie shrugged. “Yeah, well, too many muscles involved. And it’s the wrist that’s the real problem.” He paused for a moment and pushed the call button on the elevator. “Anyway, it’s my brother you have to thank. Somehow, he found time to seek Bronn out for me in between all his mountains of hookers and coke–”

Bran frowned a little.

Jamie caught himself short. “Ah, sorry-“

Bran shook his head. “No, really. Don’t worry about it.” The spiral he’d hit after losing his legs and his father in such close succession was neither unusual nor surprising. First it was painkillers, then heroin. His mother Catelyn, who had pretty much lost her moorings when Dad had died, found them long enough to pull his siblings together in an intervention, and then get him into rehab. They had enough money to pay for the best rehab in the area, round the clock care, and so on, and they’d done all that; but it was still her, sitting beside his bed in those brutal first days and nights, listening to his groaning and screaming, wiping the sweat from his face and chest, letting him squeeze her hand till it bruised, trying to soothe him with her low, smoky voice.

She’d gotten herself together enough to do that, but she hadn’t been the same since.

“I’m not going to turn into a pumpkin because you mentioned drugs,” Bran reassured him.

The elevator arrived, and they got inside.

Bran got himself around town without much assistance, for the most part. He called car services to get him to and from his basketball games, board meetings, and wherever else he wanted to go. He was pretty much a professional at getting himself out of the chair and into the car, and his mother had had a chair built that was relatively easy for him to open and collapse on his own.

The family brownstone was on a quiet block of the Upper East Side, and they hadn’t had much trouble getting permission to build the ramps he needed to be able to get in and out of the house. Catelyn had had all sorts of craftsmen come in, lowering the light switches, replacing the appliances, and so on. He was able to move about the house, cook his own meals (to the extent that he could cook), take care of his own laundry, and pretty much do for himself. She’d turned the back sun room into a gym, mostly for his use although she did keep a treadmill and exercise bike in there, theoretically for her her own use, or his sister’s. That was where he’d been having his lessons with Bronn.

When he arrived home this particular evening, he called out, but nobody answered, despite a number of lights being on. It was spotless and had that lemon smell that told him the cleaning people had been in while he was out. He wheeled into the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove, enough to make pasta for two people in case someone came home. As it started to boil, the front door opened, and Arya came striding in.

She tossed her helmet onto a table and clomped across the gleaming oak floors to where he sat, reading a dog-eared copy of "Steppenwolf". “Hey, cripple,” she said affectionately, and kissed him on the cheek, ruffling his longish, shaggy brown hair.

“Hey, loser,” he replied warmly, setting his book down. All he could see clearly was her small, leather-clad silhouette, with its choppy haircut, the late afternoon autumn light pouring through the front windows and directly into his face. “I’ve got water on for some pasta, you hungry?”

“Yeah, sure. Here, you keep reading, I’ll throw the meatballs on.”

Bran hadn’t moved out of the house because of the lengths his mother had gone to to customize the place to be comfortable for him. Arya hadn’t moved out because she was pursuing a career in kickboxing. The mantel over the fireplace was actually loaded with trophies. She competed in every tournament she could find, routinely placed in the top three in her weight class, and won about half the time. And there was actually prize money involved in these things. Just not enough for her to reasonably move out without choosing to rely on her family’s money anyway. So she figured she might as well stay.

And they’d had a cozy sort of routine for a long time, cooking meals together, watching crappy television, going to each other’s events and games and competitions and whatnot. Their mother had really seemed like she’d lost a large part of herself when their father had died. She and Arya had always struggled to relate to each other, but it sometimes felt like they were just sharing the house, as opposed to being an actual family.  But at least Bran and Arya had each other, and they clung together like the last two cheerios in the bowl.

Except lately.  Lately, Arya had been around a lot less.  Ever since their mother had relented and let Arya inherit their father's old bike.  That vintage Indian was gorgeous and it was a shame to let it sit rusting in a garage.  And Arya seemed to be taking that obligation rather seriously.

“So,” he began over dinner, “you’ve not really been around much lately?” He phrased it as a question.

Arya paused, looking at him with those intense grey eyes of hers that mirrored his own. They had dark smudges of sleep deprivation under them.   “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Are you out with your gang?”

Arya snorted and rolled her eyes. “It’s not a gang, idiot. It’s just a riding club.”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“When it’s a gang, we dance around in circles with switch-blades and sing songs from West Side Story.”

Bran snickered with a mouthful of food, which he almost choked on.

There was an awkward pause. His sister had something on her mind.

“What?”

“Um, well… yeah, the club… I uh…” she paused a little. “I met a girl.”

“Well, it’s a girls’ motorcycle club, so I guess you met a lot of girls.”

She gave him a frustrated look. “No, I mean… I met… a girl,” she said again, slower and with more emphasis.

He paused. “Like a girl, like, you’re dating her?”

She nodded.

He took a moment, thought it over, and decided it was no big deal. “OK. So you’re like, gay or something?”

She waved a hand around noncommittally. “Yeah, you know. Whatever they say. Gay. Bi. Queer.”

“I thought they stopped saying queer.”

“They did, but then they brought it back.”

“OK.” Bran took another bite of spaghetti and asked, “So what’s her name?”

“Dany.”

“Danny? Is in, Danielle?”

“As in, she’s Palestinian, and her real name is something Arabic.”

Bran smirked. “So you’re dating and she won’t tell you her real name. Sounds like a solid basis for a relationship.”

She shot him a dirty look.

“Is she cute?”

Arya’s face suddenly looked fourteen again. “Oh my god.  Yes.  She bleaches her hair blond, and she’s just… her body is like…” She covered her eyes. “Yes. She’s cute. And hot. And just, really… cool. And smart. And she looks so good on her bike, it’s like…” She let out a little whistle.

Bran chuckled. “Am I ever going to meet her?”

Arya hedged. “I hope so. Maybe soon. We’ll see.”

The front door opened, and their mother came in. Neither of them knew where she’d been. “Hi, you two. I’m going upstairs if you need me,” she said briefly, and breezed up the stairs.

“Hey mom, Arya’s a lesbian,” Bran called after her, earning him a punch in the arm from his sister.

“Alright, just call me if you’re going to be late,” her voice drifted back down the stairs; clearly she hadn’t heard him.

“What’s wrong with you?” Arya hissed at him.

“She’s been like this all week,” he sighed. “It’s like we’re not even here.” He looked at her. “Arya, you really should tell her. Take her out riding this weekend and tell her. I feel like she’s just… nowhere right now.”

Arya sighed. “Ugh, ok, maybe.”

“Fuck maybe. Promise me.”

She looked at him, registering the urgency in his look. Their mother had brought him back from the brink, he felt compelled to return the favor.

“Alright. I promise.”


	5. Detective Stark's Day Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Sansa spends her first day of being suspended.

Sansa woke up on the first day of her suspension, looked at the clock, and forced herself to roll over and go back to sleep. After an hour of rolling around, trying this position and that, refolding the pillow and tucking it a hundred different ways, perpetually looking for the cool spot, she got up. She brewed a pot of coffee, made herself banana pancakes. She watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" on television and took a long, relaxed bath. It was glorious.

After drying off, she sighed, looked around and thought, _Now what?_

She slid into some jeans and a light sweater, and decided rebelliously that she was going to leave her hair down today, because damnit, today she wasn’t a cop. She was just going for a stroll in the neighborhood.

She had moved out to the precinct she was working, because she felt like she couldn’t protect and serve a community she didn’t understand. That, and she didn’t care for commuting. On what she made, she could afford a modest place out here that was her own, with no need for roommates. It was a second-floor walkup in one of those odd brownstones; it had an immense living room and tiny kitchen and faux-wood linoleum throughout the place. But it was hers, paid for with her own money, and there was something satisfying about that.

She passed the produce shop, the good pizza joint, the elevated subway station. She passed the park, the shoe repair place (how did that even stay in business?), the crummy pizza joint, and the post office. It wasn’t long before she realized that her stroll was turning into walking the old beat she’d walked before she’d been promoted to detective.

She’d been a lousy beat cop, she reflected. Not because she couldn’t do the job, but she didn’t want to do all the shitty little things you have to do to sometimes to make your numbers as a beat cop. She once caught a desperate, poor woman trying to steal diapers from the cramped grocery store by the subway station. That would have been a pretty clean arrest if there ever was one. But who would she have been helping, she wondered. She looked at the terrified woman, the baby in the stroller, and shook her head, and then without saying a word, she walked up to the register with the diapers, bought them, and slipped the bag into the undercarriage of the stroller, leaving the woman in grateful tears on the sidewalk in front of the store.

It was fortunate that Captain Selmy was smart enough to see what she was really good at: following a thread, finding a story, investigating it carefully, telling it clearly, with evidence.

And now she wasn’t allowed to do it. Two weeks wasn’t a long time, but right now, it seemed like an eternity. She decided to go visit her brother.

 

***

 

“Suspended?” Robb repeated with disbelief.

Sansa nodded. “Yeah. Just two weeks, but still. I’m losing my mind already and it’s only the first day.”

He sighed. “Look, San. I think it’s admirable, what you’re doing. We all do. But… that’s not where you belong, and you know it. I mean, clearly, it’s getting to you, if you’re running around punching people in the face.”

“Not people. Hyle Hunt.”

Robb shook his head. “OK, but still. Let me put you at a desk over at Fast Forward. You could be interviewing Neil deGrasse Tyson by _next week_. You could be editor in chief in a few years.” He ran his fingers through his dark curls, which seemed more defiant today than unruly, and she still saw the eighteen year old who used to skateboard down Second Avenue. He looked funny to her in expensive silk shirts and Manolo Blahniks.

Sansa rubbed the back of her neck and walked over to the window, looking at the cars (mostly yellow cabs) like matchboxes, thirty seven floors down, inching along Seventh Avenue in a scrunched-up line, one after the other, nose to butt. In a few hours, it’d be lit up, and look like a neon snake of red taillights from up here. She’d seen it a hundred times, when she and Robb and her other brother and sister had come to Christmas parties, back when Dad was running the show.

“Thanks, Robb, but I like my work.” She wasn’t lying.

You wouldn’t peg her for any kind of cop. She had a gentle disposition that almost read as shy; you’d never suspect her clear eyes of possessing the kind of steel that you’d see in them when she cuffed someone who had it coming. What you could see though, was the intellect behind them; prep school, UN school, Columbia School of Journalism. A thorough, careful thinker, someone whose placid demeanor allowed her to take everything in, a mind able to see and draw connections and then pull them till the sweater unraveled. She’d always been a better writer than Robb –not that he was a slouch, his pedigree was just as good, after all -- and there’d been a time when she had been expected to take over StarkMedia, not him.

But that was before everything. Before their dad’s death. Manslaughter, it was called. Probable suspect shot a few days later while resisting arrest. Mugging, not much evidence, kind of thing that happens all the time. Just not usually to people like Ned Stark, who moved through the rare air of The Other New York City that most people don’t get to see: galas, art openings, tables at Le Cirque, birthday cards from some Astor or other.

“And I’m good at it,” she added after a quiet moment during which she imagined Robb was probably hoping for her to change her mind. “I don’t want to have to start somewhere else and work my way up all over again.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Robb said, smiling calmly. “You’re a Stark.”

Sansa frowned at him. Robb was smart and good at the business, kind-hearted, generous, treated his wife Jin-Mei like a queen, and she could sing his praises till the stars burned out; but there had always been a little bit of an entitled air about him. She’d never noticed it as a kid, or at least never thought there was anything wrong with it, but then she started walking a beat in Ridgewood.

Growing up, she’d always struggled to get along with her tomboyish younger sister, who constantly railed at having to toe the line of everything that came along with being a Stark. But now, after a few years of the buzzsaw accents of Queens natives, the stink of the meat from the butcher shops on hot days, the sweatsuited Polish mothers in designer knockoffs, pushing strollers full of sweatsuited babies wearing matching designer knockoffs, the balding Italian retiree who sat on the corner in his lawn chair every damn day in the warm weather, because he had nothing better to do… She understood a little better why the weight of the family name drove her sister nuts. This wasn’t even some dangerous ghetto, it was just a noisy, colorful, bustling, mostly safe, working-class neighborhood. Yet still, the people she protected and served were never going to have half of the opportunity and privilege that she was born to. _What was the difference,_ she wondered, _between a handout because you’re poor, and a handout because you’re rich?_

“Robb, I love you, but you don’t get it.”

He shrugged. “You can’t blame me for trying, San. Dad built this thing from a few million dollars of Sulzberger money.  Everyone said he was nuts when he sold our family's share of the Times to start it, and now look at it. It’s personal for us. I hate it every time I have to go away on business and there’s not another Stark around Winterfell Towers.”

Sansa smiled. Even Robb couldn’t make himself call it the StarkMedia Building, though their father had bought and renamed it almost eight years ago. “Jin could be a Stark if she wanted. How come she won’t change it?”

“She says it doesn’t flow right. Sounds weird.”

“She could hyphenate?”

“Jin-Mei Ling-Stark?” Robb looked legitimately aggrieved at the notion.

Sansa nodded, chuckling and grimacing at the same time. “Yeah. Yeesh. That’s too many hyphens.”

They looked at each other for a minute, and then Robb got up, walked soundlessly around the desk across the thick tan carpet, and hugged her. “Jin’s in Hong Kong visiting her dad. Do you want to come with me to a theater benefit at NYU this Saturday night?”

“Why don’t you bring our sister?” she suggested mischievously.

“Because she’ll show up in a Sex Pistols t-shirt singing along loudly to Public Enemy on her iPod?”

Sansa laughed. “Okay. Ask Mom. If she won’t go, I’ll go.”

“Mom won’t go,” he sighed. “She’ll write a check, but she doesn’t show up to this stuff anymore. C’mon… It’ll be funnnnn…” he wheedled. “The Tisches always get Ducasse to cater. Ian McKellen’s supposed to do some dramatic reading or something. C’mon, dork. You’ll have fun, just come.”

Sansa relented. “OK, fine."

As she headed down to the subway, she started mentally rifling through her closet to decide what she was going to wear.

 

**

 

The doorbell rang around 6:15. Sansa opened it to find Bree standing there with a box of freshly-made lemon bars from the Polish bakery. The only thing that could have made that sight more welcome is if she’d been holding a stack of case files in the other hand.

She came inside and Sansa started peering into the refrigerator. “Dinner?”

“Sure,” Bree answered, “but the cupboard looks a little bare. Maybe we should order in.”

“Ye of little faith,” Sansa responded cheerily.

She pulled out a package of bacon. She found half an onion in the vegetable drawer. Then out came the eggs.

“Omelettes?” Bree asked, trying not to sound doubtful.

“Nope.”

She opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of frozen peas, then walked to the cabinet and found half a box of linguine. Fifteen minutes later, she was grating parmesan cheese and sprinkling black pepper onto two steaming bowls of linguine carbonara. Bree was duly impressed.

They tucked in, and Sansa began recounting her day while Bree studiously contained her smirking. After dinner, they sat on the couch together, eating the lemon bars, Sansa’s head resting comfortably on Bree’s shoulder while they watched “The News Hour;” Sansa snarking occasionally at Jim Lehrer while Bree drifted in and out of snores. In truth, Sansa thought, it was the happiest she’d been all day.

The phone rang halfway into an interview with Christine Lagarde. Bree stirred awake and Sansa picked up the phone. It was Captain Selmy.

“Stark, I have good news,” he said, not sounding particularly cheerful.

“Hyle Hunt is quitting journalism forever?”

Selmy grunted. “Not _that_ good. Your suspension is ending as of tomorrow.”

Sansa didn’t allow herself to get excited. “You don’t sound happy about it.”

“Yeah. Well, you’re being moved.”

“What?”

“To Midtown South.”

Manhattan? That precinct was where the StarkMedia offices were. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”

Bree sat up now, looking concerned at the slightly panicked note in Sansa’s voice.

“You’re being moved to Midtown South, effective immediately.”

“Sir, if this is some kind of disciplinary action, I’d really just as soon deal with the suspension.”

“It’s not coming from me, Stark. And it’s not about Hunt, as far as I know. Someone wants you moved to Midtown South to work the biker case.”

She was vaguely aware of the fact that there had been this rash of incidents lately involving biker gangs, though none had hit the 104th. “But then who’s moving me? Sir, I don’t know anything about gang cases-“

“It’s not coming from me,” Selmy repeated. “Come clean out your desk if you have time tonight, and show up there tomorrow morning. Captain Frey is expecting you.”

And then it hit her. “Sir, what about my partner? Is she also getting moved?”

Selmy paused. “I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise anything. As of now, Tarth’s assignment doesn’t change.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, Stark.”

She hung up, stunned.

Bree’s brow furrowed. “What was that?”

“Selmy. I’m getting moved to Midtown South to work on the case with the biker gangs. I have no idea why. I have no idea who asked for me. And they’re just moving me, not both of us. Selmy said he’d try and see if he could move you with me, but he didn’t seem optimistic.”

Bree got up and hugged her for a long minute. “It’s OK, San. It’s not like we don’t have each others’ numbers.”

“I know, but spending all day with you is...” She stopped short. Is what? Comfortable? She didn’t know how to put it. “What if my new partner sucks?”

Bree hugged her again. As they stood there, she stopped and pulled back. “Hey. Midtown South. Isn’t that where your dad’s--?”

“Yeah,” Sansa cut her off.

Bree nodded, looking at her carefully. “Well, here’s your chance. You could get a look at those case files.”

Detective Stark’s face slowly relaxed into a smile. “Yeah. I could.”

Bree tugged on a lock of Sansa’s copper hair. “See? There’s always a bright side.”

Not always, Sansa thought. But the odds seemed in her favor this time.


	6. The Flaming Cunts Get Liquidated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya makes friends, falls in love, meets Empress.

_“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame._   
  
_On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”_

_–Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_

 

Arya lay next to Dany on the lumpy mattress on the floor in Dany’s one-room apartment in Prospect Heights, still trying to find her breath. Lowriders rolled outside the window, rattling the glass with their thumping bass. The room smelled like incense, pot, and sex, and Arya felt as though she'd been hit by an express train. Dany had the sweetest, prettiest face Arya had ever seen, but she tore Arya to shreds every time they fucked. In the best way, of course. Arya loved having those sore muscles, those scratches on her back and bite marks on her thighs; it was like she could still feel Dany when they weren’t together. Arya had slept with a few guys, and drunkenly made out with a few girls at parties, but she was pretty sure that Dany was spoiling her for any future sexual relationships; there was no way that it could always be this scorching with everyone. Every time she pulled Dany’s clothes off, it felt like she was unwrapping a fantastic present she didn’t deserve.

Dany kissed her, and then rolled off the mattress and onto the little rug next to the bed. She pulled a thin scarf over her shoulders, knelt there for a minute, and then bent forward, touching her forehead to the floor, praying in Arabic. Arya had seen her do this at the club, too (except clothed); she kept another little rug there for that purpose. But watching her on these evenings was probably one of Arya’s favorite things in life at the moment; seeing her kneeling naked in the dim light, the white-blonde waves of her hair spilling down the brown skin of her back, singing the prayers that had come to imprint themselves on Arya’s senses even if she didn’t know the words. It was probably the closest she would ever come to a religious experience of her own. Arya had no faith; couldn’t remember if she’d lost it, or never had any. Her family was Methodist as a matter of ritual, but it didn’t quietly permeate her life or her soul in the way that Dany’s practice seemed to do for her.

Arya lit the remainder of a joint sitting in the ashtray next to the mattress, took a few pulls, and watched the smoke curl around in the candlelight. The sun was going down, and she’d have to get going soon. But not til Dany was done.

When Arya had first joined the motorcycle club, they’d been calling themselves the Flaming Cunts. Arya didn’t particularly like belonging to a club that sounded like it had a yeast infection, but whatever. It was a bunch of girls to ride with, and help her learn about her bike. And besides, some of them were really cool. She never met girls like them at Westover, or in any of the many prep schools she’d been kicked out of.

Asha was Jamaican, and her father was some kind of mayor or administrator of some small town outside of Kingston. She left a few years ago, fed up with being ignored by her father in favor of her incompetent brother and his doomed political ambitions. She had dreads that she kept pulled back in a ponytail, except there were always a couple that escaped. She looked absolutely natural with a cigarette hanging from her lips while she tinkered with her bike’s engine, humming along to whatever dancehall music she’d put on. She was the coolest. She knew the most about how to fix and maintain her bike, she knew where to get the best riding gear (which always looked great on her), and even when she was laying a beatdown on someone, she seemed mellow and unbothered. At the same time, somehow, her laid-back appeal took up an inordinate amount of space in any room they were in. She always turned heads. She wasn’t pretty per se, but she was _sexy_. And she knew it. Arya was in awe for the first couple of months that she knew Asha.

Meera was a Puerto Rican girl from Bushwick. She lived with her social worker father and a brother who had, like Bran, gotten over a drug problem, but unlike Bran, had replaced it with Santeria, which Meera felt was only marginally better. Meera wasn’t flashy the way some of the others were, but she had a quiet intelligence that reminded Arya of her sister a little, and when she wasn’t messing around with her bike, she was usually reading something that Arya recognized as being pretty serious literature.

But it was Dany that had fascinated her the most. Nobody knew her whole story, but she was Palestinian, and came to the States as a fairly young kid, after her parents died tragically; she'd grown up under the care of a psychotic and, it was suspected, abusive older brother. She was a couple of years older than Arya, and she was like a Russian nesting doll: every layer that you popped open revealed that there was another layer to pop open. Arya first saw her pull into the warehouse on her bike; then she took off her helmet, and she was wearing a hijab underneath it. Then after looking around the room for a minute to make sure there weren’t any men around, she took the hijab off, and underneath that, her hair was bleached blonde. She showed up to mosque on her motorcycle, cleaned her apartment listening to Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. She smoked pot, but wouldn’t drink wine. "You're not very serious about the whole Muslim business, are you," Arya had ribbed her. Dany had shrugged, looking at her as if she'd said something really silly. "I take what I need and do what I can handle. Isn't that what everyone does?"

The first time they’d slept together, as Dany was shoving her down onto the mattress and yanking her shirt over her head, Arya had half-playfully asked, “Isn’t this against your religion?” Dany paused, looked at her with a funny smirk, and said, “My religion believes in mercy and forgiveness. If Allah is mad at me for this, he’ll get over it.” Arya made no argument: who wants to debate theology when there’s a goddess in bed with you, removing your pants with her teeth?

There were a few older white women in the group who seemed a little weird, and a few other girls her age from various parts of the city that Arya didn’t really connect with because they seemed phony in a way that Arya couldn’t pin down. But mostly, it was pleasant for a while, until it all went to shit.

Not things with Dany, that just kept getting better. But one day, after a Chinese place in Sunset Park wouldn’t seat them because of Dany’s hijab, Arya’s spikes came out. “Racist fuck. Nobody treats my girl like that,” she fumed. They came back later that night after it was closed, the lot of them. Arya took a pipe and smashed the plate glass window, and the bunch of them streamed inside with bats and pipes and started breaking whatever they could find.

The rush of it was like nothing she’d ever felt. It was almost better than sex.

After that, she started looking for excuses to bust shit up. It was years of barely repressed frustration coming out, in a way that even hitting people in the ring in tournaments didn’t give her. Any slight, real or perceived, was a reason to go destroy something. She didn’t get much argument from most of the girls in the club, either.

It went on for a while, until one night, they chose the wrong target.

It was alarmed. There were cameras. There were cops. The others got away, but Arya, Dany, Asha and Meera were stopped before they were able to get back on their bikes, cuffed before their helmets even came off. One cop tugged Dany’s helmet off and saw the hijab (she always wore it under the helmet, for pretty much this exact reason) and stopped, laughing. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

And so, there they sat in a cell in South Brooklyn. She was supposed to be going home early tonight because she’d promised Bran she’d take her mom out riding and come out to her about Dany. Now it was going to be a new plan.

It was late and Bran would already have turned off his phone for the night. Her other brother… well, he never picked up his phone anymore. She pleaded with the arresting officer, “My sister’s a cop, can’t you give us a break this time?” 

He laughed at her. "What do you think this is, sweetheart, a speeding ticket?" 

So it could only be her mother. She called, and Catelyn’s voicemail picked up, the outgoing message the same as it had been for years, her voice sounding brisk, yet warm. She left a pleading message explaining that she was in jail in Brooklyn, picked up for vandalism, it was just bullshit, please can you come bail me out, et cetera.

That was the night she met Empress.

The four of them were sitting around in the cell, for hours, looking morose. Dany was sleeping with her head on Arya’s shoulder. Asha had somehow chatted up the guard and talked him into giving Meera her tattered copy of “Siddhartha” from out of her jacket, and she sat reading it. Asha was comparing notes with the guard on places to get ackee and salt fish along Eastern Parkway. Arya just sat there, quietly losing her mind.

Footsteps came down the hall and a voice called, “Stark, you’re out.”

She looked up. “What?”

The cop came over with his big key and opened up the cell. “You’re out. You got bailed out. You other three, too.”

They all looked at each other. Shrugging, they got up, left the cell, and followed him out to the front.

The woman standing there waiting for them was … familiar and yet not. She was leaning against the intake desk, wearing black motorcycle gear, her face almost completely expressionless. She looked them over appraisingly. “You four,” she said, shaking her head. “Clearly you’re the smart ones out of your group, but not so smart that you couldn’t work out not getting picked up.”

“Who the hell is this?” Dany asked, still rubbing her eyes.

“We’ll get to that,” their savior promised. “But let’s be clear about something. You’re done with that group. It’s liquidated. You’re out of trouble now, but this is a one-time rescue. You get pinched by being stupid again, I’m not helping you out.” She looked at Arya. “And you… If you’re going to be doing criminal shit, you might want not want to do it on a highly distinctive, easily recognizable vintage bike.”

Arya looked at her, slackjawed. “I really do not understand what’s going on right now,” she said after a moment.

“What’s going on is, we’re going to go across the street and get some burgers, and we’re going to talk about how you four are going to start doing something a little more useful with your violent, vandalistic tendencies.”

They looked at each other.

Asha addressed her. “And what do we call you?”

Arya watched those intense eyes drift over the four of them. “You can call me Empress for now.”

“Are you joking?” Arya demanded.

“Are you?” Empress asked, fixing her with a stare that reminded her of every awful, stupid thing she’d ever done in her life. “Is getting your ass locked up funny?”

Arya shut her mouth and dialed her tone back ten clicks. “It’s just… that’s quite a nickname, that’s all.”

Empress shrugged. “Queen is overused.” She waved a hand, beckoning commandingly. They had no choice but to follow.


	7. The District Attorney's Two Phones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaery associates with some shady characters and then, the Mayor.

The District Attorney kept two phones in her black Kate Spade clutch bag.

One was a smartphone. It had her email, her other email, her Skype, her Facetime, her Facebook, her twitter and of course, her actual phone. It was the number that her family had, that everyone in the city government had, from the Mayor to her secretary, Jeyne. It was the one that anyone who was anyone called when they wanted to get hold of her.

The other was a junky red plastic flip phone that was four years old and lived on a pay-as-you-go plan purchased through a dodgy little shop in Brooklyn. There were only two people that had the number for that phone. And if it rang, she always knew she wanted to take it.

That phone rang on this particular afternoon as she was walking into City Hall for a meeting with the Mayor. She felt her purse vibrate, and skittered into a side doorway, pulled it out and answered. “What do you have for me?”

“Oh, it’s pretty good,” answered the silky male voice from the other end.

“It always is, if it’s you,” she answered.

A smart lawyer knows that you can’t always rely on the cops for your investigations, and that sometimes you need someone a little shadier to get at the information you really need. Of the small number of such shady characters she kept in her circle of acquaintances, Varys was her favorite. His information was always good, his methods always discreet.

“You’re too kind, you dear creature,” he responded.

Margaery and Varys had never met, and they were both very happy to keep it that way. He had a strangely smooth, almost effete way of speaking that had unsettled her when she first started using him; she couldn’t help thinking of Silence of the Lambs. But after a few years of getting to know his work, nothing made her happier than the mince-y sound of his voice and his heavily mannered way of speaking. She always pictured him as a bald guy in a room somewhere wearing a silk dressing gown and those marabou slippers with the poofy feathers on the toes, stroking an angora cat while admiring his photographs by the light of an old tiffany lamp. It was absurd, and probably completely wrong, but it entertained her.

“Not at all,” she replied.   And that was true. “So?”

“Well, there’s an illegitimate son.”

“Whose?”

“Not the Mayor’s, unfortunately.”

“His father’s?” she prodded.

“Mmm-hmm. The young gentleman in question is currently residing in the thriving metropolis of Newark, where he gets arrested and/or ticketed frequently, for terribly mundane things like turnstile jumping and possession of small quantities of the marijuana.”

Margaery smiled. “And I know you’re thorough, so I’m sure there’s an answer for this, but how do we know that he is who he is?”

“Apparently the young gentleman’s mother took a blood and DNA test because she intended to sue for child support. Roberto gave her hush money, rather than see it go to court. I can get you both the test results as well as the bank records indicating that the young man’s mother received regular transfers from a fund attached to Roberto Barteón’s estate.”

Margaery was pleased. It wasn’t what she’d been looking for, but she was sure it would be useful.

“Would you like copies of the paperwork, darling?” Varys inquired.

“Not right now,” she decided. “Hang onto it. I’ll arrange for a courier to stop by and meet you with my thank you package.”

“A pleasure as always,” he said, and hung up.

She strolled inside.

Her meetings with Tommy Barteón were always pleasant. He was an easygoing, handsome guy who wanted to make everyone happy. It was what had gotten him elected. But the tendencies that get one elected don’t always make for good governance, so she often found herself struggling through conversations with him, trying to explain why she thought something was a bad idea. He wasn’t stupid, not by any stretch; he’d attended the same prep schools and whatnot as any other guy from the social stratum they both hailed from. His temperament and desire to please people, though, often led him to intellectually justify decisions that made him feel good, rather than making difficult choices. Margaery supposed that was what his Deputy Mayor was around for; if she gave one tinker’s damn about anyone else’s happiness apart from hers and those in her inner circle, she had an extraordinary gift for hiding it.

Margaery wondered whether Jorah Mormont’s appointment as Commissioner was something that the Deputy Mayor wanted for strategic reasons, or whether it was Tommy, feeling sentimental toward the old cop.

“So, I’m going to talk to Jorah about this business with the bikers,” he was saying, “I know he’s got people on it, but I hate that it’s getting so much press.”

She nodded. “I’m hoping we can get something airtight on it soon. Honestly, I really don’t think it’s that important a case in the grand scheme of public safety, but you’re right, Tommy, the press has been all over it.”

“How many gang incidents in the outer boroughs where the brown people live,” he sighed ruefully, “and nobody cares. But you start beating up rich white boys in Midtown, and it’s a big story.”

Margaery actually agreed with him. Tommy Barteón may have been the son of a South American media mogul, and enjoyed all the privileges that came along with that, but at the end of the day, he was still a biracial guy living in New York City, and that meant that probably, at some point in his life, he had been hassled by cops for wearing clothes that were too nice, or being in the wrong part of town while appearing too brown. The city had certainly had its share of embarrassing practices under some of its administrations over the last few decades. Even her grandmother’s administration didn’t escape completely unblemished and had to change some of the NYPD's brass.

“Anyway, I think it really makes a difference to things, having you in office, at least from the law enforcement side,” she said brightly. “I think that it makes the police force a lot more apt to be more careful about profiling, and abusive arrests. Jorah and I have talked a little about that.”

Tommy nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. He gets it.”

Margaery pounced. “Is that why you appointed him?”

Tommy smiled. “Well, I appointed him because he’s qualified.”

She feigned injury, with a sparkling smile on her lips. “Oh, Tommy. Don’t treat me like a reporter. There are lots of qualified people. You could have tapped any commissioner from any Republican administration over the last 20 years if you wanted.”

He chuckled. “Maggie, you _know_ he’s qualified. He ran Midtown South, while he was also serving as Borough Commander for all of Manhattan, for a whole year, during the Umber thing.”

“The Umber thing,” as he delicately referred to it, was a scandal that forced the Manhattan Borough Commander, Jon Umber, to retire rather suddenly, and due to some internal dysfunctions within the Department, Jorah had to do both jobs. Somehow, Midtown South had better numbers than it ever did during that time.

“But,” Tommy finished, “to be honest, when you get down to it, you have to trust the people you appoint to these kinds of positions, and I trust him. Our family’s known the Mormonts for a long time and they’ve always been rock-solid.”

“I don’t doubt it for a minute,” she enthusiastically. “Resilient, too. Didn’t his father lose pretty much everything in the dotcom bust?”

“Yes. But Jorah managed to get their affairs straight after his dad passed. And now, here he is. Commissioner.”

“There he is,” she agreed, smiling. There was a pause that would have become awkward if it had gone on a split-second longer. But she knew when to steer a conversation and this was her moment. “Tommy, I won’t tie you up one more minute. I’ve got six hundred things to get on top of today and I’m sure you do too.” She stood up.

Tommy got up and escorted her to the door.   “Thanks, Maggie.  Say hi to your brothers for me.”  

Tommy was a good guy. She was going to feel a little badly about cleaning his clock in the next election.  

But only a little.  And probably not for very long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, in case you are wondering, in this particular AU, Robert's kids are actually Robert's kids. Not to worry, Jaime and Cersei's relationship will still be super-weird and unhealthy; it may or may not include the twincest.


	8. Easy Rider and the Warehouse of Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bran, like everyone these days, has a secret.

_"When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal."_

_\-- Siddhartha_

 

“Yeah, you just tell the car to go back up First Ave., and then swing around. We’re right in the middle of the block. We’re the only house that has ramps on it. You really don’t have to pick me up, though. I can get there on my own.”

“That’s OK,” Jamie replied breezily, “you’re on the way.”

“You live in Chelsea. I live on Beekman Place. How is it on the way when we’re going to the bottom of Manhatttan?” He basically had to come all the way over from the West Side to the East Side, uptown about fifty blocks, only to turn around and go even further downtown than where he came from.

“My dyslexia includes an inability to read maps. I’ll be there in two minutes, Bran.”

He hung up.

Since Arya had sort of slipped away from him lately, caught up with this new girlfriend of hers (he was a little jealous, he’d admit it), Bran had found himself keeping more company with Jaime Lannister than he’d ever expected. It mostly seemed to take the form of Jaime inviting him to sit on other charity boards with him, which they did together and then usually had lunch or dinner or something around it. His family seemed to have completely unraveled, so it was nice to connect with someone else. He had a game coming up this weekend, and Arya had a tournament coming up soon, so he knew at least there’d be those times that they’d see each other. Maybe he’d even get to meet the mysterious Dany, finally.

But in the meantime, Jaime was easy to talk to, brimming with concern that felt almost paternalistic (though not quite, somehow); bringing Bran books he thought he might like (“I’m not much of a reader but my brother is really fond of this one.”). Bran was surprised to discover (though he probably shouldn’t have been) that Jaime’s knowledge of modern art was pretty extensive; it seemed nearly as good as his mother’s. In fact, it was almost entirely Jaime’s doing that Lyonsbank was so heavily involved in supporting the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney: there was even a new modern wing going up at the Whitney which would be named for Jaime’s father, Tywin.

“Was that Jaime Lannister?” his mother asked coolly, emerging from the kitchen.

“Yes. We’re going to a board meeting for the Lower Manhattan Preservation Committee. Someone’s trying to knock down some historic theater or something.”

Catelyn frowned at him. “Bran, I’m thrilled that you’re involved in charities and doing good, and I’ll gladly write a million checks for anything that you feel is worthwhile, but-“

“But you don’t like that I’m doing it with Jaime Lannister,” he finished.

“No, I don’t. Those people are nothing but a problem. I know you think Jaime seems nice, or he seems different from the rest of his family-“

“Mom, you don’t understand. He’s a good guy. And he knows almost as much about art as you do.”

“Maybe, and maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t trust him, and I don’t like you spending so much time with him. I’m not often wrong.”

Bran scowled. It was true, she wasn’t often wrong. She was a scary judge of character, and her instincts were near perfect in most other things too. It was what had made her such a good art dealer. She’d bought up a bunch of Warhols when he was nobody, and sold them at a tremendous profit (except for the one that hung in their living room, the one that looked like a bunch of electric flowers – you had to keep some of the good stuff for yourself). But it was more than a matter of good taste: she’d even been savvy enough to buy up some Damien Hirsts well before he was anyone. Even though she found his work obnoxious and precious, she knew it was going to blow up, and it did. But she didn’t keep any of those; who the hell wanted to look at a chopped-up cross-section of a shark all the time?

“Well, it’s not like you’ve exactly been very present, you know,” he pointed out, his voice becoming edgy. “Ever since Arya got Dad’s bike, she’s never here either. And Robb and San? We never see them, it’s like they’ve been taken over by aliens.”

“I was present when you needed it most,” she said, looking a little hurt.

“Well, I don’t know what you do with your time anymore, but I need to be around people, and I wish it could be my family, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going that way right now.” Bran heard the car pull up out front. “Look, my ride’s here.” He started wheeling himself toward the door. “Mom, I will never stop appreciating what you did for me when I was at my worst. But you know, you have to come back to life, at some point.”

He departed, leaving her standing alone under the electric-flowers painting, which was, of course, perfectly lit.

 

**

 

Like everyone else these days, it seemed, Bran had a few secrets. His big secret was that he’d been working on getting his own license to ride a bike. Jaime had recommended a craftsman who customized bikes for people with disabilities, and Bran was looking forward to being able to surprise Arya with being able to go riding with her. Jaime Lannister had a lot of advice when it came to holding his family together, because that had become his job in the Lannister family: his father hated his brother, his brother hated his sister, and his sister hated, well, nearly everyone (Bran still shivered at the mention of her name). They sounded even more dysfunctional than the Starks, which somehow made Bran feel a little better.

Nobody was home the day they delivered Bran’s bike. Jaime’s craftsman had simply advised him to get a bike with an automatic transmission, so all of the bike’s functions were operated by hand controls. He’d helped him settle on this one: a cherry-red Ridley Cruiser, that looked and sounded exactly like a custom V-twin. He was going to be rolling around on what was, for all intents and purposes, a flaming red chopper. He was going to feel like Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider.”

He suited up.

Getting on was a little tricky, but he’d get quick at it, just as he eventually got quick at hoisting himself into cars and collapsing his chair with one hand. After he’d gotten himself on it, he pulled out his phone. He logged into the Find My Phone app using Arya’s password (how could he forget: the one time she asked him to find her phone a few weeks ago, she’d told him, with some embarrassment, that the password was “flamingcunt”). The screen pulled up the map, and showed him exactly where her phone was: somewhere out in the ass-end of Brooklyn. He zoomed in, worked out the address, and then entered it into the GPS. Was she ever going to be surprised, he thought gleefully.

The pipes roared as he guided the bike down the block, up First Avenue, and over the bridge. This was an entirely different level of freedom than the one he’d managed all this time, dragging his spring-loaded wheelchair around in hired town cars with tinted windows.   He couldn’t believe that it took him losing his legs and his family to figure out that this was such an amazing way to spend your time. It wasn’t a mystery to him anymore why Arya was gone all the time. This, _and_ a girl? He’d never be home either.

He arrived at the warehouse, at the end of a pretty blasted-out looking block, not far from the water, in Sheepshead Bay. There was nobody in the street, which was riddled with potholes and sparkled here and there with sprays of broken glass. He checked the phone finder one more time and there was no question about it, Arya was in that warehouse. He pulled the bike up as close to the door as he could, took off his helmet, and pounded on the door with it. Then pounded on it again. A few minutes went by, and then he pounded on it again and started calling his sister’s name.

He was getting ready to pull away, when the door opened. A pretty girl with short, black curls and dark eyes leaned halfway out. “Can you please stop making so much noise? We don’t want to bother our neighbors.”

Bran, a little taken aback, looked at her. He looked around at the blasted out buildings with their windows that were alternately boarded-up or simply gaping, with no glass in them; he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. She was smiling a little at him. “Um, sorry? I uh, I think my sister’s here, I was just looking for her.”

“Who’s your sister?” she asked.

“Um, Arya? Do you know her?”

She looked as if she was considering how to answer that question. “I can’t confirm or deny anything,” she said finally. “I don’t know you.”

Awkward pause.

“That’s a nice bike,” she said.

“Thanks. It’s brand new. I just got it today.” He noticed her hand, dangling at her side, holding a copy of “Siddhartha”. “What do you think of him?”

She looked down, realizing he meant the book. “Who, Hesse?”

“No, Siddhartha.”

Her eyes twinkled a little. “I like him. He’s a good guy, but he’s uncomfortable in his skin. He doesn’t learn until the end how to dwell in who he is. I think that’s probably how it is for most people.”

Bran smiled. “Yeah. I like the way _Steppenwolf_ deals with that discomfort better, though.”

The girl shrugged and wrinkled her nose a little. “Yeah, it’s a great book, but I’ve never liked that whole duality of man theme, even when it’s done well like that. It forces a binary choice when most people are a collision of a lot of things, not just two.”

“I find Harry relatable,” Bran said, getting ready to defend his favorite character in all of literature.

“Oh, yeah? You part wolf?” she asked, now becoming flirty in a way that Bran had not been on the receiving end of in a very long time. When was the last time a pretty girl looking at him with anything other than Florence Nightingale pity? He couldn’t remember. He’d passed on a _lot_ of pity sex.

He grinned. “Some people say.”

They paused for a moment, grinning at each other and not knowing what to say. Bran finally said, “So uh, if my sister is in there, which I realize you’ve said you can’t confirm or deny, tell her I was here and that I want her punk ass to come riding with me.”

“Well, if I do know your sister, which I can’t say if I do or I don’t, and I do see her, which I can’t tell you if I will or I won’t, I’ll tell her you were here.” Smiling, she took a pen from behind her ear, which she’d clearly been using to underline passages in her book. Then she took his hand, and wrote something on the back of it. “What’s your name?” she asked as she was writing.

“Bran,” he said, wondering if this was actually happening.

“Bran,” she repeated. “OK. Nice meeting you.” She gave him a last smile, a last brief, warm look with those dark eyes with their thick lashes, and slipped back inside. The heavy steel door clanged shut.

He looked down at the back of his hand. It had a phone number, and a name: “Meera.”


	9. The First Strike of Phaedra's Fist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Empress gives meaning to violence.

_“You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.”_  
 _–Zen and the Art Motorcycle Maintenance_

 

They sat, five, around a table for six in the diner across from the station, the girls clustered together on one side, looking at Empress with either trepidation or doubt. Except Meera, who just looked curious, watchful.

Empress noticed this immediately. She also noticed Meera’s book. “Siddhartha,” she remarked. “And it looks like it’s not the first time you’ve read it.”

Meera nodded. “Yeah. I get something different from it every time.”

“That makes it a good book. It also makes you a good reader. How’d you end up with this bunch?”

“I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I saved up and bought a bike.”

Meera wasn’t going along with these acts of vandalism out of peer pressure, but, Empress could tell, out of loyalty. The bike was a spiritual path for her, and the women in the group enabled and supported her relationship with the bike. So they had her loyalty. Interesting.

A young waiter came by, his style of service impressively enthusiastic for three-thirty a.m. Empress impassively ordered five burgers, medium-well, and cokes. The girls sat quietly.

Empress knew this was one of the only women’s riding clubs around, and maybe the only one that had a lot of younger women like these four, barely out of their adolescence. It was also, judging from the makeup of the group sitting in front of her, remarkably diverse.

“So,” Empress began, looking first at Asha. “There are some very dangerous parts of Kingston. And,” she added, looking at Meera and Dany, “Brooklyn. Am I correct in assuming all of you have beaten the shit out of someone at some point?”

After a hesitation, they all nodded wordlessly.

Empress pulled out a newspaper. It was The Citizen, the one local New York broadsheet that StarkMedia troubled itself to print. She paged through to an inside page with a very small image of a man’s smiling headshot above a blurb that was about four sentences long. The headline read, “Celebrity Fitness Expert Acquitted on Domestic Abuse Charges.” She turned it around so the girls could get a better look. “Recognize this guy?”

“Yeah,” Asha said, “the guy with all the subway ads.”

“What about him?” Meera asked.

“He’s a wife beater. And you four are going to go fuck him up,” Empress said, matter-of-factly.

Dany was skeptical. “But the courts acquitted him.”

“The courts aren’t always just. Evidence can be tampered with. Technicalities can be invoked. Judges can be bought,” Empress answered. “Everyone who knows this man knows what he was doing to his wife. What he’s going to continue to do to his wife now that he's being allowed to go back home. I’m giving you the opportunity to stop that from happening.”

They looked at each other in silence as the waiter arrived with their food. Empress took the check from him immediately and handed him a large bill, instructing him to keep the change.

“Now. Do you want to go back to smashing windows over bullshit, and getting pinched for it? Or do you want to start doing things that mean something?”

 

**

 

Empress replaced Arya’s custom vintage Indian with something that called a little less attention to itself; a black Kawasaki Ninja 650R, an extremely popular (and therefore common) bike that handled hard stops from high speeds and would never have trouble starting up even on cold days, which the city had its share of.

She changed other things too. She located a new clubhouse for the girls, and gave them a new name; Phaedra’s Fist. Meera seemed to like it and Empress knew she’d explain to the others when she’d fully sorted it out herself. Empress would select several new additions to the group as time went on: the Scottish girl wasn’t the only one. There would be washed-up Police Academy cadets, former rivals, all choices none of these girls would make themselves. But Empress knew. The thing would grow; it would become something other than what she herself even planned, something better. She would pick girls who each added something particular, something unique.

Because if there was one talent she possessed, it was how to make picks.

 

**

 

Their first ride would be one of very few that Empress would take with the girls. She needed to see how they worked together. She chose Arya and Asha to lead; she would ride behind to watch them. It stirred something in her to hear the roar of their pipes as the five of them sped down the Belt Parkway, along the water, smelling the ocean air and looking at the strings of sparkly pinpricks of light, the Verrazano bridge, that tethered Brooklyn to Staten Island. Leaning into the wind, clutching the bike, looking at the four sets of taillights, her pack, she almost felt normal.

She paid cash for them to roll up into the paid parking garage across from Ramsey Bolton’s apartment building, the place where he paid rent on a parking spot that cost nearly as much as an apartment in some parts of America. He lived in one of the shiny new glass and steel structures that seemed to have sprouted up unbidden near the West Side Highway, casting nasty shadows over the quaint brownstones of Greenwich Village. Empress hated those new buildings; so oblivious to their surroundings, so insistent upon themselves.

She’d done most of the work for them: identifying him as a target, finding his address, finding which parking space was his. She’d shown them the pictures of him and his car before they left. So now, they waited, parked at the other end of the level where he would be expected to park.

“Where the fuck is he?” breathed Arya.

“Patience, star,” Asha replied calmly. “It’s not like you got someplace else to be now, is it?”

Soon enough, a grey Lexus rolled by, and swung a little too quickly into the spot that they were expecting. They revved their engines.

Ramsay stepped out of his car, wincing a little at the noise of the four roaring engines echoing in the hard, enclosed space. Their bikes leapt forward down the rows of cars, Dany peeling off to smash the breaker box with a big, heavy pipe, to kill the lights on the level. They’d taped their plates over before rolling into the lot, so that if the cameras caught them at all, they’d have nothing to work with except that they were five people on bikes. And there’d be little to no video of the actual thing, provided they were quick enough.

Empress hung back, watching.

As the other three rolled up to Ramsay’s car, the level plunged into darkness. The only lights were the headlights of the bikes. They pulled up and boxed him in.   From where she sat, Empress could see his eyes bulge. Arya jumped off her bike first, coming at him with all her tournament moves. But a man boxed in isn’t going to fight like a tournament fighter; he’s going to swing and flail and do his damndest to take at least one of his attackers with him, and Arya got knocked backwards into her bike, toppling it over. Asha and Meera jumped off their bikes, each grabbing one of his arms, and pinned him against the hood of his car. Dany caught up to them, and struck him across the knees with her pipe, ending the resistance he was trying to mount. Arya got up, collected herself, swung a booted foot into his crotch, and then his head, his face, his head again, his stomach, his ribs. Kicking, punching, elbowing, over and over, until his face was bloody and bashed up. Who knew how many broken ribs he had, how much plastic surgery he would need to put his face back together.

“This is what happens to you when you beat your wife, you fuck,” she growled at him.

He spat, and blood and a couple teeth sprayed out of his mouth and landed on the front of his grey Brooks Brothers shirt. “Fuck you,” he mumbled, clearly in pain, with half his mouth not really functional. “I’ll find you,” he continued to threaten impotently.

Those were the last words he said before Dany’s pipe connected with his head. He went limp, and they dropped him on the hood of his car, broken, and bleeding out. They got back on their bikes and burned out. It wasn’t entirely pretty or perfect, but they’d gotten it done. And they’d learned for next time.

That would do, she thought. It would do.


	10. Snow at Midtown South

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa's unpleasant first day at Midtown South

Captain Walder Frey was a gaunt, sour-faced man with a head like a gourd that was being collapsed inward from the sides; it looked vaguely too small, too narrow, for his hat, which sat oddly atop it. His office smelled like cleaning products and mothballs, the paint was peeling, and the fluorescents were much brighter than she was used to. It made Selmy’s old office in Ridgewood seem homey by comparison. Though probably, the real difference had been Selmy himself.

As she sat down, Frey launched into a clearly prepared speech. “Look, Stark, I don’t know if you’ve got any ideas about thinking who you are, but you’re not the first detective to ever break a case. I don’t know why you’re wanted here on this biker thing. I have people working on it. I didn’t want or need to bring you in.”

Sansa was blindsided by the hostility but recovered quickly. “Sir, I didn’t want to be here either. Who asked for me to be moved?”

Frey was circumspect. “That information is apparently above both our pay grades, Detective.”

Sansa sat regarding him coolly. She knew his type; the type who got off on throwing people off balance with low-wattage aggression. The worst thing to do would be to feed it. “Well, we’re in the same boat, then, sir. Who’s my partner?”

“I don’t have a partner for you,” Frey replied. “Selmy tried to foist your partner from Queens onto me but I already have one cop I don’t need, I’d just as soon not take two. You’ll report to Detective Snow. He’s in charge of the investigations. You’ll have access to the case files. But no bullshit, Stark, and no showboating. You clear everything you do with him. Any questions?”

“Yes. Am I going to be assigned any other cases while I’m here?”

“Well, you might solve the thing tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to start you on something else you might not finish.” She was convinced that it wasn’t the march of time that caused the paint to peel from the walls in this office, but Frey’s sarcasm. They probably had to do a new coat every year.

Detective Jon Snow was kinder than Captain Frey, though not much more welcoming. He looked to be in his early thirties, with dark curls like her brother’s and a liberal covering of stubble that looked two days old. He began their conversation by grumbling about not being able to smoke in the building anymore. She supposed he was handsome, but he looked utterly world-weary. Too world-weary for someone not much older than herself.

When she asked if they had run histories on all of the victims to look for a common thread, he was dismissive. “This isn’t a serial killer case. We don’t even know that it’s all the same group of bikers.”

When she asked for maps of the incidents, he showed her the map of their activity in Midtown South, but didn’t have a complete one for the rest of the city. “Any information you want pulled, Officer Shae can help you.” He gestured to a young cop at a desk on the other side of the glass of his office. “And if you want to go question anyone, just clear it with me first. I don’t want to cover old ground.”

This struck her as odd. If someone was questioned, even if it didn't yield much of anything, it ought to still appear in the file. But she bit her tongue for the moment, and, sitting wedged at a child-sized desk shoved into a corner, which had no computer and only a small lamp and an in/out box, began to get acquainted with her new assignment.

She rang Bree after work and said tiredly, "I'm coming up." Her place was on the Upper West Side, a ten minute subway ride from Midtown South if things were running on time. Bree had inherited her father’s condo after he passed some years ago, a smallish but well-designed place with a lot of open space to it. She’d inherited his two jewelry stores, too, which she’d promptly sold off. She had no interest in jewelry, nor in running stores that sold it. Especially not the Brooklyn store, which was located in a largely Hasidic neighborhood and where, if she faced the public, she’d be expected to sport some dreadful frock that looked utterly ridiculous on her. In truth, those dresses the Hasidic women wore didn’t look good on anyone, which (as Bree explained it to her) was sort of the point. But just the thought of her friend, six-foot-two, broad-shouldered, short-haired, and looking like a linebacker, sporting any sort of dress, let alone some dreadful thing with a giant pilgrim collar or something equally terrible… She couldn’t help giggling at the thought.

In any case, Bree had parked the money from selling the stores in some fund or other, and stayed in the apartment she grew up in, grateful to be afforded the opportunity to do something with her life that she felt was meaningful, something that she was actually good at. Sansa knew almost immediately that despite their visual mismatch, that she could not have been better paired.

Sansa arrived at Bree’s door at the same time as the sushi delivery guy. She and Bree bickered a little about who was paying as Sansa insistently shoved a couple of bills into his hands and sent him packing. She came inside to find a bottle of sakei sitting in a pot of hot water on the stove and two small sakei cups sitting on the counter near the stove. She smiled appreciatively at her. “You know me too well.”

Bree took a potholder and poured the hot sakei into the small serving bottle while Sansa unpacked box after box of Japanese food: shumai, gyoza, California roll, Alaska roll, a large spider roll with the deep-fried soft-shell crab feelers sticking out the ends, a sunshine roll stuffed with yellowtail and mango, two miso soups, a vegetable tempura appetizer… “Jesus, Bree, are we expecting half your synagogue for dinner?”

Bree smiled, slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t know what you’d want.”

“Come on. I’d be so happy to see sushi, I’d eat whatever two rolls you bought me and be thrilled about it.”

“Well, I didn’t know what I wanted either.” Her small smile was half sheepish, half playful. Bree poured off two brimming cups of sakei from the serving bottle. She turned up the volume slightly on the Billie Holliday playing in the background, humming along with “Oooooh, what a little moonlight can doooooo….”

It was a relief to be around Bree’s energy again; serious, thoughtful, considerate, gentle, and not least of all, happy to see her. They sat on stools at the butcher-block island in the kitchen, sipping sakei and digging into the ridiculous overabundance of Japanese food in front of them while Sansa talked about Captain Frey’s hostility and Detective Snow’s seeming lack of interest.

After her third cup of Sakei, Sansa felt a need to be much more comfortable than she was, so as she was spinning the yarn of her day, she padded in her stocking feet into Bree’s room and began rifling through one of her dresser drawers. “… and the files are so weird, there’s a lot of stuff that seems like it ought to be there, but….”

After several moments of rifling, she called, “Bree, what happened to that pair of flannel pajama bottoms I left here?”

“You took them home to wash them, remember?”

Crap. She had.

"I’d offer you some of mine but I think they’d be about a foot too long on you.”

“Whatever, do you have any gym shorts or something? I’m so completely done with these pantyhose right now, and these pants are really uncomfortable without them.”

Bree came in, fished up a pair of gym shorts that she’d not been able to wear for quite some time, handed them over, and walked back to the kitchen.

Sansa peeled out of the stockings and tossed them onto the bed along with the slacks, slipping into the shorts as she walked back to the counter. They swam around her waist a bit, but it was still an improvement, no matter how incongruous they looked with her pale pink tailored shirt. “… and anyway,” she resumed, as if there hadn’t been a break for a wardrobe change, “it was just really strange. I mean, why wouldn’t the file indicate whether a witness or person of interest has already been questioned, even if they decided they didn’t find anything worthwhile?”

Bree shrugged. “I don’t know how they do things there. But you were always more meticulous about your case files than everyone else. The D.A. barely had to do anything but show the jury the Woodbine folder, and that’s about you, San. I’m not the report-writer here.”

Sansa sighed. “I just wish I knew who moved me, or why I’m supposed to work on this thing.”

Bree squeezed her hand. “You’re a good cop, San. There’s got to be a reason why someone wanted you there.” She paused. “So, did you start looking at your dad’s files?”

Sansa shook her head. “No, that’s extracurricular and it’s going to take me some time to get up to speed on the thing I’m supposed to be working on. I don’t think Captain Frey would be overly thrilled with—”

She suddenly felt a sharp nip at her ankle. She kicked reflexively, and Bree's big, fat, furry bruiser of a cat went skittering across the hardwood into the living room. Her head, which had been feeling pleasantly fuzzy from the sakei, cleared measurably. "Ow!" Sansa complained. "Bree, your cat's an asshole, you know that? He always does that!"

Anytime she had exposed ankles or calves, Podric was there to nip at them. Hard. "Aw, it's not his fault, he was raised wrong." Bree looked at the big, furry dope. "She didn't mean that Podric, you're not an asshole."

Sansa's purse chose this moment to start vibrating and singing “Baby you’re a fiiiiiirework!”

Bree lifted an eyebrow. “Your ringtone is Katy Perry?”

“Shut up,” Sansa grumbled. She glared at Podric a moment more. "Asshole," she whispered again, then pulled out her phone and answered it. “Stark.”

“Hi Detective, it’s Officer Shae.”

“Hi, Shae. What’s up?”

“Well, I got the results you were looking for on the victims in our precinct,” she said. “I’m still working on getting the other ones for the other precincts, I need to make a lot of calls and…”

“That’s OK, Shae, let’s start with Midtown South. What’d you find?”

“Well, I did what you said and ran them to see if any of them had any prior arrests.”

“And?”

“Almost of all them do.”

Interesting. “For what?”

“Well, here’s what’s weird. It’s all stuff like, um… rape, assault, DV, some child abuse priors...”

“How many?”

“How many what?”

“How many have priors?”

“Oh. Sixteen out of twenty-two.”

In this moment, Podric crept up and nipped at her exposed calf again. "Son of a bitch!" she yelped, nudging him away with her foot.

"Uh, Detective?"

Sansa sighed frustratedly as Brienne spirited Podric of into her room and shut the door. “Sorry, it's not you, Shae. That's a lot. Did they go to trial?”

Shae paused awkwardly. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“OK, well, that’s the next thing we’re going to need to find out; whether they went to trial, and what happened. I’ll probably want to take a closer look at the ones without priors tomorrow.” She looked at the clock over the oven and realized it was closing in on eight. “Shae, what time is your shift supposed to end?”  

Shae paused awkwardly again. “It was supposed to be over an hour ago. I just wanted to let you know what I found.”

Sansa smiled. It was impossible to tell whether Shae was dedicated, or displeased with Snow’s handling of the investigation, or thought Sansa was somebody she had to impress. Either way, she felt obliged to thank her profusely for her efforts and encourage her to go the hell home for the night.

“Sixteen out of twenty-two of the biker victims in Midtown South had priors for rape, domestic violence, or child abuse,” she said out loud to Bree after she hung up the phone. “Does that strike you as weird at all?”

Bree nodded. “Very.” 


	11. If It Be A Sin to Covet Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Margaery attend the theater benefit, and we finally meet the deputy mayor.

Margaery showed up at the Tisch Ballroom in a blue silk Versace evening dress with a plunging neckline and a criminally low back. Her hair was up, curled and perfect, with little tendrils twisting down around her face and the nape of her neck; the studied-unstudied look that took about four hours from start to finish.

A jazz combo played unobtrusively in the corner of the room, and cadres of tuxedoed waiters glided around with trays of canapés, wine, and champagne. The lights had been lowered in the room to that level where everything looks like it’s covered in a layer of honey and everyone is twice as attractive.

She made her way over to plant air kisses on the hosts’ cheeks, rave about the décor and how excited she was to hear the dramatic reading, how much she loved the theater, how she’d be sure to call upon them when she was ready to reach out for next season’s opera funding, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could get some kind of program going to get disadvantaged children from underprivileged communities in to see some of these types of cultural events?

She caught Tommy Barteón’s eye and he excused himself from whatever conversation he was involved in and sailed over. “Maggie,” he said enthusiastically (he was nearly always enthusiastic). “You look fantastic.”

“You clean up pretty well yourself, Mr. Mayor,” she joked, meaninglessly adjusting his boutonniere, a white rose. She had it to a science, how much eye contact to allow in order to make such a gesture jovial and familiar, rather than flirty, and she stayed just on the former side of that line.

He smiled. It wasn’t hard to understand why the people of New York decided they’d be able to deal with looking at him for the next four years; he got his father’s dark hair and square jaw, his skin a few shades lighter olive, but he’d managed to snag his mother’s sea-green eyes.

“Where’s the Deputy Mayor, is she joining us this evening?”

Tommy nodded with a wry smile. “Yeah, she’s around somewhere, terrorizing someone.”

“You don’t say,” Margaery replied mischievously. She winked, and sailed off to find her brother. He was just coming back in from the balcony, with Oberyn Martell on his arm and a glass of champagne in hand.

“Loras! Oberyn!” She kissed each of them quickly on the cheek. What a couple. Oberyn was quite a bit older than her brother, but the Israeli technology guru was good-looking and energetic, and she couldn’t deny that they seemed happy. “Lore, you guys are donating to this thing tonight, right?”

Loras shrugged. “I imagine so. I brought my checkbook.”

“Wonderful! Just remember, I’m going to need you to pony up for City Harvest next month too. They’re going to need about $250K to remain solvent for this quarter.”

“Didn’t I just pony up for that last month?” he complained mildly.

“No, that was the United Way. After school programs in underserved communities.”

Oberyn grinned broadly. “Maggie, I swear to God, your brother could learn a thing or two from you about multi-tasking.”

“I multi-task just fine,” Loras replied suggestively.

Margaery rolled her eyes. She was about to poke at them with some affectionate barb when from the corner of her eye, she saw Robb and Sansa Stark entering the room.

Two things struck her. The first was how much they resembled pictures of their parents from the society pages that she’d seen growing up; Robb, with his vaguely lupine, elegant features and serious eyes, and Sansa, with her red hair swept up off her neck and her slender shape shimmering in a purple Vera Wang sheath dress that caught the low light perfectly.

The second thing that struck her was how incredibly attractive Sansa Stark was. She’d mainly seen her cop headshot, the photo they took for her department I.D.; it was what they showed on the news and in the papers, and her hair was always stuffed up into a hat, with her collar buttoned all the way up, her clear eyes staring into the camera with the look of someone who hated being photographed. It would take her several minutes to match that image up with the woman on Robb Stark’s arm.

She breezed over. She’d met Robb a few times at benefits in the last couple of years, ever since he took over his father’ company. “Mr. Stark,” she addressed him with weapons-grade warmth and cheer.

“Miss Tyrell,” he replied, friendly but guarded.

She looked at Sansa. “I have to say, Mr. Stark, your wife does not look Chinese.”

He smiled. “My wife’s in Hong Kong with family. This is my sister, Sansa. Sansa, this is New York City District Attorney Maggie Tyrell.”

Sansa took her hand and shook it firmly. She was smiling broadly at her and seemed a little flushed and maybe even starstruck. “Miss Tyrell,” Sansa said. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m very impressed with your work. You’re quite a powerhouse.”

Margaery turned up the wattage on her smile. “If I’m correct, you’re no slouch either. Aren’t you the detective responsible for the Woodbine bust?”

She noticed a look of mild surprise flit across Robb’s face.

Sansa blushed some more. “Just doing our jobs,” she said humbly, suppressing what seemed like nervous giggling.

Margaery waved dismissively. “And so am I, Detective. That’s no excuse for false modesty.”

“Oh…” Sansa paused, seeming suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m off duty, tonight, Miss Tyrell. You can just call me Sansa.”

Margaery smiled. “Alright then. I’ll see you two around. Wonderful to see you again, Mr. Stark. Lovely to meet you, Sansa.” She breezed away, waving to someone across the room who she was reasonably sure was a board member for a wheelchair basketball organization.

 

***

 

Robb went off to mingle while Sansa got herself a wine and some miniature egg rolls stuffed with truffles or something. She was mildly annoyed with herself for the way she had fangirled the District Attorney and wanted to disappear for a few moments to regroup. She wandered out to the balcony, which was empty at the moment, listening to the jazz drift in from the ballroom and watching the crowds wander around in Washington Square Park at sunset. They were playing “Fine and Mellow,” and she found herself wishing she could have brought Bree.

“Sansa Stark.”

She turned and found someone standing behind her, someone she hadn’t seen in years: Cersei Lannister-Barteón, in red formal wear, bejeweled and, while older than the last time Sansa saw her in the flesh (which had to have been nearly a decade ago), she still looked like nothing so much as the disturbingly still-attractive black-widow matriarch in a telenovela, with stiletto heels, manicured nails and a shortish “I just rolled out of bed like this” haircut that clearly cost about three hundred dollars. “Ms. Lannister-Barteón,” she replied, recalling that Cersei had hyphenated, and tortured and humiliated anyone who didn’t get their mouth around all of it.

Cersei was a beautiful woman; even at her age, she had suitors sniffing around, despite her reputation as a “complicated” individual. “I just use Lannister now. It smacks less of nepotism given my current position.” She paused, assessing Sansa. “I hear you’re a police officer now,” she remarked. The “isn’t that adorable” at the end was implied.

“A detective, actually,” Sansa replied carefully.

“Well, then. In Queens, isn’t it? I saw something on the news a few months ago.”

Sansa nodded. “Yes, you probably did. I’ve been recently moved, though. I’m in Midtown South, now.”

“Really? Transferred to the same precinct that handled your father’s death?” She clucked her tongue. “Terribly inconsiderate on someone’s part.”

She looked Sansa up and down, and Sansa felt queasy, like she was being picked over by a vulture.

“Joffrey’s working for Lyonsbank. He finished his MBA not too long ago, and my father is fast-tracking him at the Zurich office.”

The mere mention of his name made her feel sick. Joffrey had been the only boyfriend she’d ever really had, back in prep school. To say that he made her life a misery was putting it mildly. She couldn’t say what was wrong with him, but he was horribly twisted, and he’d tormented her in ways that still made her stomach twist up when she thought of them. Everyone close to her assumed, even now, that her lack of interest in dating and sex was because of her relationship with him. The more complicated truth was, her lack of interest in sex was the excuse he’d used for psychological abuse she’d spent the last several years studiously forgetting.

She met Cersei’s eyes, and said as coolly as she could, “Good for him.”

“Boys get it all handed to them in life, don’t they,” Cersei went on, casually acting oblivious to how uncomfortable it made Sansa to hear anything at all about her eldest son.

Sansa held onto the stem of her glass so tightly, she was afraid she might break it.

 

**

 

Margaery was in the middle of chatting up an elderly heiress about pre-K programs when she caught sight of Sansa Stark on the balcony with Cersei Lannister, and she could smell the tension from fifty feet away. She politely excused herself and swept out to the balcony. “Sansa, there you are, darling! I’ve been looking all over for you.” She turned to Cersei, keeping the sparkle up and charm full-blast. “Madam Deputy Mayor, what a pleasure. Tommy said you were around somewhere, I had no idea I’d find you chatting with my new best friend. Isn’t Sansa Stark the loveliest person you’ve ever met?”

Cersei’s silky mouth smiled, but her eyes said, _Go fuck yourself, Maggie_. “Oh, yes. Detective Stark and I have known each other for several years, isn’t that right?”

Margaery saw Sansa’s nerves jangling; it wasn’t an uncommon reaction to Cersei Lannister, but nevertheless, she felt compelled to rescue her. “Sansa, they’re going to be closing the bar during the reading and you really need to try one of these cocktails before they do. They use _rose water_ in it, it’s so subtle and lovely, come with me. Come, come!” She slipped an arm around Sansa’s waist and ushered her off the balcony before Cersei could say anything else. “I’ll see you later,” Margaery called to her.

“Thank you,” Sansa whispered as Margaery whisked her away.

Margaery squeezed her elbow. “I know what she’s like. I couldn’t leave you out there alone with her,” she replied reassuringly, and she found she couldn’t help letting her lips brush against her ear as she did.

Sansa didn’t react; she didn’t pull away but didn’t change anything else about what she was doing either. "You don't know the half of it," was all she said. They walked to the bar, still linked together, and Margaery ordered a pair of those rose water martini things.

 

**

 

Sansa sipped at the delicately-flavored drink, and suddenly realized that Margaery Tyrell’s eyes were focused on her in a way that made the rest of the room disappear and shrink away, until there was only Margaery, looking at her with a degree of interest that made her stomach lurch. Margaery _was_ a powerhouse and Sansa had admired her for as long as she’d been aware of her. She was attractive and impressive and charming… and yet the walls felt like they were closing in. Everything made her feel claustrophobic; Margaery slipping a coaster under her drink, Margaery lightly touching her elbow, looking at her with feline eyes that made her feel she was about to be pounced on. Yes, hunted, that was it. She felt hunted, and it didn’t feel good. Her head felt like it was full of cotton. She stopped being able to even hear what Margaery was even saying.

And then the lights dimmed, and one thing that Margaery said poked through the cotton in her brain: “… but if you do happen to find something on your free time, Detective, don’t bring it to me in pieces. Bring it to me whole. Bring it to me whole, and I can help you.”

Then the lights went down, and Ian McKellen began reading the St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V. Sansa politely extricated herself and ran from the room, the sound of his British accent booming after her as she hurried away: _“…_ _By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires. But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive…”_


	12. Lovers, Nighttime, New York City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An overview of the romances that define the events of this story. Not to oversell it but I love this chapter so much I want to marry it.

The first thing Asha saw when she opened her eyes was Ygritte’s hair, in red-gold flames across her pillow. She would never get tired of it, she thought. Never get tired of the music of her accent, never get tired of the fierceness of her laugh. She would never get tired of her wild eyes, her whiskeyed kiss, the way she seemed ready for anything that Asha was. Ygritte drove her mad, she picked fights, she stole the covers at night, and Asha loved it. All of it.

She woke up in the dark, in a sliver of moonlight piercing the blinds, loving the contrast of their limbs tangled together, light and dark, sticking out from under the sheet. Loving the smell of her hair; aloe shampoo, and cigarettes. Loving the smell of her, of _her_ , all over her hands, her fingers, lingering on her lips.

Asha got laid a lot, but not like this. Not with a girl that she would fight beside, not with a girl who was as fiery as Asha was cool, not with a girl that took that cool sometimes and rolled it up in a little ball, and used it to sink a three-pointer in the trash can from across the room. Whatever Empress might say, Asha couldn’t be convinced in some secret part of herself that Empress didn’t pick Ygritte just for her.

“Wake up, star,” she whispered, kissing Ygritte’s cheek, brushing her tongue around the pale shell of her ear, kissing her along her chin and jaw, kissing her down the tendon of her neck to the base of her throat, making her mouth as soft as she knew how to do.

“What time is it?” Ygritte whispered, not opening her eyes.

“It’s the wee hours,” Asha answered, not relenting in her slow, soft, hungry exploration, nesting her fingers in Ygritte’s burning-copper hair.

“Oh, right then,” Ygritte sighed sleepily, enjoying the attention. “Carry on, princess.”

 

**

 

Bran and Meera sat, their bikes parked side by side on the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights. They watched the boats slip down the East River, watching the lights twinkling on the shining sides of the buildings of Lower Manhattan. “The towers of Zenith,” Meera remarked, admiring the mirrored surfaces of the office towers, the glowing skyline that felt almost close enough to touch.

“Sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods,” Bran answered. They often talked in book quotes, and tonight they were speaking the language of Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt.” He slipped his arm around Meera’s waist. She sat in front of him on his bike, eating a chocolate ice cream cone she’d bought from a vendor truck who was still out this late on a Saturday night. “Let me have another bite,” he said softly in her ear.

She raised the cone over her shoulder, glancing back at him, and dabbed the end of his nose with it.

“Hey!” he protested, wiping his face with a bandana he yanked from one of his pockets.

“I told you, you were gonna see mine and want your own.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He leaned his head forward, pushed some of her dark curls out of the way, and started kissing the side of her neck, nipping softly with his teeth.

She sighed, and leaned back into him, letting her head drop against his shoulder. “You should listen to me more,” she breathed.

Bran didn’t care about walking again. Being with her felt like flying. That she knew how to fix a bike, that she argued literature with him, dissected Almodóvar films, teased him, kissed him like she meant it… he drank it up and wanted more.  Her warmth, her sighs, the way she arched her back against him when he slipped a hand lightly up beneath her shirt… He felt himself getting stiff against her back. He felt what he’d been missing being returned to him.

“Your ice cream’s gonna melt,” he whispered.

“Fuck you.”

“Promise?”

She turned halfway around, and looked at him, a little smile creeping across her red lips, her eyes dancing. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

He kissed her mouth. She tasted like chocolate ice cream.

 

**

 

Arya sat cross-legged on a raggedy blanket on the grass in Bryant Park, staring up at “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” playing on the huge movie screen, her arms around Dany, who was leaning back against her. The park always had movies on the big screen on summer nights, and you had to get there early with your blanket or folding chairs to get a good spot. It was a strange collective experience, more so than seeing something in a theater; they were two little dots in a sea of people spread across the big lawn, surrounded by the towers of the midtown Manhattan.

Dany had never seen “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, but it was one of Arya’s secret favorites, despite all her tough-chick posturing. Audrey Hepburn always broke her heart. And she would always well up at this scene, mouthing the words to George Peppard’s speech along with him, just as she was doing now:

_“…You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”_

Dany was all covered up, the way she usually was in mixed company; long-sleeved linen shirt, faded jeans, hair covered under a hijab that had some kind of subtle pattern on the fabric. Before being with Dany, Arya had never understood: _How could hair possibly be such a sexual thing that you needed to hide it?_ , but when they were together like this, she found herself burning to run her fingers through all of Dany's hair, to look at it framing her face like sunshine, to brush it out of the way to kiss the back her neck. Dany turned around to smile at her, and Arya noticed a lock that had half-escaped near her ear; she stroked it once, lightly, and tucked it back under the fabric.

This earned Arya a warm, gentle kiss; the kind of kiss that felt like Dany was trying to breathe her in. Arya wondered as she sat there in the warm evening, swooning against her soft lips, _How could I possibly have something like this? How am I the one who gets to open this beautiful gift?  Why is she looking at me like this moment is all she wants in life?_ Arya couldn’t help it. It slipped out of her mouth: “Are you in love with me?” 

Dany gave her the sweet, amused that look she often gave Arya when she’d said something very silly, and ran a hand through Arya’s dark, choppy hair. “You really don’t know?”

Arya shrugged. “I’m asking.”

Dany looked at Arya with what suddenly felt like all the affection that the world could hold. She said, “Of course I am. Of course, _ya shamse o nojomi_.”

"What's that mean?" Arya whispered.

"My sun and stars," Dany answered, and she kissed Arya again.  Arya felt her heart collapse in on itself, just like a sun. Just like a star.

 

**

 

Bree, in her pajamas, opened her door to find Sansa standing there, stunningly lovely in her shimmering dress. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at the thing?”

Sansa flung her arms around Bree’s waist and breathed in all the scents that made her smell like her; herbal body wash, coffee, raspberry mints. She rested her head against Bree’s broad chest for a minute, trying not to shake. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into her shoulder, “I had a really weird evening. Can I stay here tonight?”

“Of course.” Bree squeezed Sansa tightly for a minute, stroking her back with a firm, gentle touch that almost instantly unwound the marble-hard knots in Sansa’s neck and shoulders.

Sansa pulled back and looked at her uncertainly. “Do you want to kiss me?”

Bree’s face was quizzical. “Um… I never thought about it… I don’t think so.” It was a rare moment that she found her former partner difficult to read, but this was one of them. “Do… uh… do you want me to?”

Sansa shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I just… I just want to be …” She floundered. “…near you.”

Bree pulled her inside the apartment and shut the door, and drew her close again. She gave Sansa the same pair of gym shorts she’d borrowed last time she was here, and a t-shirt that went down almost to her knees. They curled up together in Bree’s bed, Bree spooned on the outside, rubbing Sansa’s shoulder gently. Sansa pulled up the thick comforter, cocooning against the air conditioning that Bree always kept blasting on nights like this when the heat of indian summer was thick, burrowing back further into Bree’s embrace; and as she drifted into darkness on the sound of Bree’s soft snoring (how was it that she could snore in a way that was gentle and comforting?), she thought, _I don’t want anything else but this._

**

 

Empress had never had another man like him. He was a little gruff, maybe, and not much of a talker, but there was passion under all that, and kindness, and she’d loved him so much that when he kissed her it felt like time stopped. Back when she used to ride that blue ’77 Goldwing with the purple running lights, they used to go riding together along the water, down to Coney Island, side by side, pounding hearts and roaring pipes. They’d gone on the Ferris wheel even though he was no good with heights. They’d shared cotton candy and he’d done his best to win her a big stuffed dog at the skee ball pavilion, to no avail. The first time they had sex, it was underneath that boardwalk, with mobs of feet clomping overhead, a speaker system blaring the Talking Heads (sounding slightly muffled through the wood), the dinging and knocking and clamoring of the game machines providing a soundtrack for their hurried, hungry fucking. They lay in the sand on their spread-out leather jackets, grinning stupidly at each other, shushing each other’s moaning, and all she could see was his face, smiling at her; all she could feel were his lips on hers, his long hair winding around her fingers, the stubble of his face against hers, and the sweet, frantic thrusts of his cock inside her.

She could still feel it now, even though he wasn’t around anymore. She could stuff whatever she liked in that empty place in her soul, and she did; bikes, girls, violence, and the peculiar bonds that came along with these things. But none of it was enough. None of it left her feeling like anything more than half a person without him.

A cold anger rose to take its own turn at trying to fill the space in her. For now, it worked.

 

Elsewhere in the city, Loras and Oberyn were having sweaty, vigorous sex against a granite countertop and moaning their declarations of love.

 

Elsewhere in the city, Robb Stark whispered sleepy sweet things into a telephone to his wife, who’d just finished breakfast in Hong Kong.

 

Elsewhere in the city, Cersei Lannister and Margaery Tyrell sat awake, each alone, sipping a cocktail, taking mental inventory of all the weapons at their disposal.

 

The city didn’t care. It lay serene as they all loved and teemed and scrambled and strove. And then it was morning.


	13. Gin, Tonic and Treachery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short one, in which Margaery makes use of her resources.

Margaery roamed the floor of her Gramercy Park penthouse, still wearing her heels, which made little echoing taps along her hardwood floors. She wandered over to the living room, flicked on her stereo, which faded elegantly to life, softly glowing in the half-light. If you looked at District Attorney Margaery Tyrell, you probably wouldn’t peg her as a Radiohead fan, but Kid A was cued up, and the moody opening bars of “Everything in Its Right Place” drifted through the cavernous space, pooling in its corners, washing through it, coloring her musings.

She’d have liked another of those rose water martinis right now, but she supposed she’d settle for a gin and tonic, which she mixed herself. She was generous with the gin.

Poor Sansa Stark, she thought, sipping away and gazing out her enormous windows over the East River, watching the boats slip up and down it with their pinprick lights twinkling. Sansa had hurried out of that ballroom as if her dress had been on fire. Margaery knew she’d been throwing a lot at her. Maybe it had been too much. She had a moment of questioning her judgment in slipping the number for her flip phone into Sansa’s bag, but she dismissed it. It was right. It had to be. She was Ned Stark’s daughter. Which meant she was smart, committed to the truth, and if she wasn’t aware of her own strength, she soon would be.

She was worried, though, by what she’d seen going on between Sansa Stark and Cersei Lannister on that balcony before she’d swooped in and whisked her out. The deputy mayor had seemed overly familiar with Sansa Stark, and Sansa had, for her part, seemed exceedingly uncomfortable with her. Not that anyone on this earth was comfortable with Cersei Lannister, except that handsome brother of hers and possibly Tommy. And frankly the jury was out on Tommy. Still, she didn’t like it. She hadn’t banked on Sansa turning up at that event and disliked the level of interest with which the deputy mayor had been eyeing her. The last thing anyone needed was for Cersei to decide she was curious about what the young detective was doing.

Thom Yorke sang:  
 _“There are two colours in my head  
What is that you tried to say?”_

She tapped her fingers on the black lacquer of her end table for a few moments. And then she reached into her purse and pulled out the plastic flip phone. Varys answered, sounding as he always did, like he was drinking a hot toddy and getting ready to give himself a manicure. “My, it’s late. You must be missing me terribly.”

“As ever,” she answered dispassionately. “Do you remember the thing we discussed the last time we spoke?”

“I could hardly forget, darling.”

“Well, I wonder if you could send that package to that friend we like to sometimes send packages to?”

A pause. “Of course. Shall I give him any particular instructions?”

“I hardly think you’ll need to. I can’t imagine him being shy about it.” She flipped the phone shut.

There, she thought with a little smirk. If there was any inkling in Cersei’s head right now about taking any interest in Sansa Stark, she’d be distracted soon enough.

“Sorry, Tommy,” she sighed to herself.  He really wasn't a bad guy.  But this really wasn't about him.

It was too late tonight to have it hit tomorrow, but on Monday morning, the bottom half of the front page of the Borough Record would have a mugshot of a handsome young man, with the headline “Barteón Brother Arrested in Newark for Marijuana Possession.”

The byline read “Hyle Hunt”.


	14. Detective Stark Un-closes the Case

Sansa woke up with Bree’s arms around her. She woke up a little more and realized that her feet and ankles were sticking out from the blanket with the air conditioning blasting on them. She woke up a little more, and heard Podric’s footsteps bounding across the living room toward the open bedroom door. He was smelling exposed ankles.   She kicked the blanket back over her feet, muttering, “Oh, no you don’t.”

Now that she was away from the moment and the panic that the whole thing had induced, her mind was kind enough to begin tossing up bits of remembered words that Margaery Tyrell had said to her last night. “…you probably have a lot of questions…” “…if you do look into it, you have to be careful…” “…you absolutely can’t tell anyone what you’re doing…” “…If you do reach out to me before you have something solid, you must be completely discreet.” She fished into her little evening bag and found a matchbook with a cell phone number jotted on it. She hadn’t even noticed Margaery slipping that into her bag.

And Sansa realized: It was her. It had to be. The D.A. had somehow engineered her move to Midtown South. Margaery fully expected her to start investigating her father’s death, under the radar. It was why she had put her there. It was the only thing that made sense. But her motives were a mystery.

It was supposed to be her day off, but Sansa decided, after she and Bree had had some breakfast and some of Bree’s high-octane coffee, that she was going to go down to the precinct and see if she could figure out what it was Margaery was expecting her to find.

Snow was around when she got there, so she mentioned to him that she’d found this trend with the priors on all the Midtown victims, and floated the idea that it might some kind of vigilante action. He grudgingly admitted that it was an interesting possibility and agreed it was a line of inquiry worth pursuing.

She found the list sitting in a folder on Shae’s desk, so she started researching the ones with priors. Sure enough, most of them had gone to trial. All of them had walked.

She set aside of the names of the six without priors, and tried to figure out where to go next with this. It was so odd, the whole thing had seemed to sprout up out of nowhere about three months ago in midtown, and she wondered whether it was going on in other precincts, other boroughs. Did it start here? Or did it start elsewhere and move here?

Snow seemed annoyed when she asked him for a computer she could log onto, but he sat her at Shae’s desk and gave her a temp password. She logged into LexisNexis (she still had StarkMedia’s login credentials) and started combing all of the local news articles for all five boroughs, looking for any reports of crimes involving multiple perps on motorcycles. There seemed to be a smattering here and there since time immemorial, but there was a cluster that started in Brooklyn around six months ago, mostly in the Sunset Park and Flatbush neighborhoods.

Those weren’t assault though, they were just vandalism, breaking and entering, destruction of property, that kind of thing. When she asked Snow what he thought about a possible connection, he was less impressed, but told her she was welcome to reach out to the precincts involved to see if their reports had anything to offer. She left a few messages with a few people who were probably not going to be around on a Sunday, and then, got up, and tried to act nonchalant as she pulled up the files for her father’s death.

'

She couldn’t bring herself to look at the photographs of her father, not yet. Her mother was the one who had identified the body. She decided instead to work backwards and look at the reports on the arrest attempt of the alleged perp, a young bike messenger from the Bronx. There was photography of his body, the torso riddled with bullet wounds, wearing skinny jeans, sneakers and a hooded sweatshirt. The close-up of his face revealed him to be shockingly young. He looked sixteen at most. She shook her head sadly.

The police had told her family at the time that they believed he’d killed her father in a mugging attempt gone wrong, and he’d been shot resisting arrest a few days later. So, she pulled his priors. Indeed, there was a string of them. Mugging, petty theft, armed robbery, possession of marijuana, from the time he was about fourteen. But no assault record, and there appeared to be no casualties or injuries in any of his crimes. The kid was troubled, clearly, and poor, but not violent. She had trouble believing that her dad would have tried to do anything but give up his wallet if a mugger approached him, so it wasn't clear how it could have the way it did.

She read through the reports written by the officers who attempted to arrest him. All four reports seemed hastily written and skipped around a bit, something that she’d seen many times in other cops’ writing and always got frustrated with. Officers Polliver and Clegane’s in particular were frustratingly hard to follow. Each officer recorded having fired between three and five shots. At the most, she calculated, twenty shots. The pictures looked like easily twice that many.

After some poking around, she turned up his mother’s name and phone number. She slipped downstairs into the street, took out her cell, and dialed.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.

“Mrs. Greenhands?”

“Who’s that?” She sounded elderly, but sharp.

“This is Detective Stark with Midtown South. I wanted to ask you a few questions about your son, Lommy.”

“I ain’t talking to anybody on the phone,” she replied harshly. “I ain’t saying shit unless I see a face and a badge with a number.”

“Will you be home in an hour?”

An awkward pause. “What the hell do you want to talk about anyhow? You people already closed the case and then hung him up in the papers. He went to his grave a damn murderer, what more do you people want?”

“I want the truth, Mrs. Greenhands. I … I’m not sure Lommy did what the department says he did.  I want to talk to you about what you saw.”

A long silence.

“Mrs. Greenhands?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“So, will you be home in an hour?” Sansa pursued.

“Yeah, I’ll be here. This better not be some kind of bullshit.”


	15. So Much Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya comes to terms with the violence she's done. Dany finally tells Arya about her brother. *TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR INCEST/NON-CON AND JUST GENERAL FUCKING SADNESS AND MISERY*

  
_"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. "_   
_– Mahatma Ghandi_   


 

Arya had gotten suspended once from tournament fights because she got a little carried away and kept hitting an opponent after they called time. But what she and her friends had done to Ramsay Bolton was another level entirely. The group found their way back to the club, and Arya somehow stumbled back to the bathroom, where she shut the door, crumpled onto the floor and started vomiting.

She kept seeing his face, more bruise than flesh, and the spray of teeth and blood that shot out of his mouth, and the sickening way his eyes rolled back into his head when Dany struck it with the pipe and knocked him unconscious. What if they’d killed him? She was filled with panic. She knew he deserved what he’d gotten, but leaving his broken body on the hood of his car left her feeling, well… sick. Smashing windows was one thing. She wasn’t sure she was ready to do things like this on a regular basis.

After a few moments, Dany knocked on the door. “Arya?”

“I’m alright,” Arya groaned.

Dany wasn’t buying it. She opened the door. She walked over, flushed the toilet, and then wet a paper towel, knelt down next Arya, and started cleaning the sweat and puke off of Arya’s face, calmly, as if she did this for her every day. She stroked Arya’s hair and kissed her shoulder. “You’re not alright. This was bigger than you thought it would be.”

Arya nodded.

“Empress said she suspected this would give you trouble,” she sighed, her voice so tender. “That it would be too abstract for you to feel comfortable.”

Arya stiffened. “She said that to you?”

Dany gave her a faint, gentle smile. “Yeah. And I guess she was right.”

Arya huffed.

“So she’s letting me pick the next one.”

“What?”

Dany sighed heavily. “Let’s go sit up on the roof.”

They climbed the ladder up to the roof hatch and found a spot that wasn’t covered with broken glass, shards of metal and other dangerous looking junk that didn’t seem like it ought to be on a roof. There were few stars in the city, even out here in the far reaches of Brooklyn where there were no skyscrapers and the buildings hunkered low against the sky. But the moon hung large in between the buildings just now, if you stared straight down the block.

“My brother has resurfaced,” Dany said finally, when they’d settled into a spot.

“There’s a lot you haven’t told me about him.” Arya didn’t know why, but she didn’t like the way this conversation was starting.

“Yes. There’s a lot I haven’t told you about me, too. Until now, only Missandei knew everything about me. But now you’re going to know, too.”

Arya heard her best friend Missandei’s name so often, she had fretted at first that she was an ex-girlfriend that Dany was still close with. Dany had found the suggestion hilarious. “No, not at all. For starters, she’s a proper Muslim.”

“Unlike you?” Arya had teased.

But Arya was not in a teasing mood right now, and neither was Dany. “This is going to be a lot,” Dany warned, and her face was as serious as Arya had ever seen it. Her white-blonde hair was down, falling in tight little waves over her shoulders and little curly wisps blowing around her face.

Arya shrugged. “I’m ready.”

Dany took a deep breath.

“My brother Vaiteh and I came here when I was ten, as you know, after my parents died, as you also know. It was a car bomb. I know from the news here, you must think that bombings and things are so commonplace, but it really was shocking. My parents were scientists at Al Najah University, we lived in a quiet, safe neighborhood, and we had a nice life. We went out to dinner sometimes, and on warm days, the four of us would go swimming in this pool at an abandoned amusement park all the time, underneath the shadow of this giant, defunct ferris wheel, and an entire passenger jet up on stilts you could climb on. I know it sounds weird, and if I could ever show you pictures, I guess it was. They had to shut the amusement park down because of military activity many years ago, but people still went there, and turned some part of it into a swimming pool. Anyway, I always lived in the shadow of sadness I guess, but I never knew it until they died. My brother said it was Mossad that did it, but I never knew why they would, my parents were just scientists. They weren’t making weapons or bombs or anything like that. Maybe it was meant for someone else.

Anyway, Vai decided we should come here. He was enough older than me that he could be my legal guardian when we came to the States. We moved to Brooklyn, he found a job, we found a mosque and a community, and we were about as proper and devout as you could ever imagine. That was when I met Missandei, and we were best friends from the beginning. When I say I don’t think I would be alive right now without her and her father, I’m not exaggerating. They were both so kind to us, and she especially saved me from myself when things became very bad.

Vai and I had a room in a basement, in an old building that was probably not up to code, and we shared one bed. We didn’t have any money and didn’t have room to put another bed even if we could have afforded it. My brother… I guess it’s not so different than it is with these priests, or these other loudmouth Christians; the ones making the most noise about how holy they are, are the most screwed up. He, um… He used to touch me sometimes, in bed at night.”

Arya felt like she was going to throw up again.

Dany continued. “This is not what most Muslim men are, do you understand? It’s as wrong and horrible in my own faith as it is in any other. I knew more men like Missandei’s father than like my brother. But what could I do? I was ten, my parents were gone, and he was all I had in the world. I made myself be ok with it. The first time I ever had an orgasm in my life, I was ten, and it was with him.”

Arya grabbed Dany’s hands. She wished she could reach back through time and unmake these things.

“I started cutting myself when I was eleven. I didn’t really know why. Nobody ever saw the marks anyway, and I made the cuts shallow enough that there aren’t many scars hanging around. And I became violent. I got into fights at school. But once, I saw Missandei getting mugged, and I ran up behind the guy and brained him with the first big, heavy thing I could find – a stray brick. He fell on his face and I just started kicking him, over and over… There was so much blood. Missandei hated that I got into fights, but she was thankful for my violent tendencies that day.

I told her later on about what my brother was doing, and she had suspected anyway. But there wasn’t much she or anyone else could have done unless I told someone, and I wouldn’t. What would happen to me?

Then, when I was fifteen, my brother suddenly decided that he had to return to Nablus. He wouldn’t say why, but just kept saying that it was too dangerous for me to go with him, and that the only way to be sure that I would be taken care of was for me to be married.”

“You were fifteen! How is that even legal?!” Arya shouted, horrified. Arya didn’t even notice how hard she was squeezing until Dany wriggled her hands free of Arya’s grip. Dany had made reference to being married before, but Arya never wanted to push her about it because it didn’t seem like something she wanted to talk about.

“In New York State, it is legal with the permission of a guardian, which is who he was to me. He told me that I had no choice, I had to do as he said and marry this man. Missandei’s father even offered to take me and become a temporary guardian while my brother was gone, so that I wouldn’t have to marry Khal, but Vai didn’t want to hear about it. He didn’t want me to be a burden, he said, because he didn’t know when or if he would be coming back. It was only proper to have me taken care of by a husband under these circumstances, he said.”

“Was he… I mean… Did he treat you ok? Your husband?” Arya dreaded the answer.

Dany shrugged. “I guess. Khal could have been a lot worse. I didn’t even know him, but he expected me to fuck him right away, because I was his wife now. But he didn’t hit me or anything like that. I think he tried to be kind, but he really didn’t know how to deal with a young girl. I got pregnant pretty quickly and learned to be happy about it, because if I was carrying his child, it was insurance that he would continue to take care of me. And at some point, there was no way around it, I started to connect with the baby I was carrying. I started to be able to feel little movements and wonder what it was going to be, what it was going to look like. Khal wasn’t a bad looking guy, he was healthy and strong and very fit. I would have had good looking children with him.

I lost the baby after nineteen weeks. It was … There was so much blood. And it hurt so much. The doctors said we should wait six weeks before trying to get pregnant again, but Khal started pushing me to try again after only about two, as if he thought the doctor was lying or something. I got pregnant again, and I lost the second one too, much sooner than the first, probably because I didn’t get the recovery time I was supposed to.”

Arya looked at Dany. A kind of deadness had come into her eyes as she was talking about it all. Arya didn’t know what to do but sit there, clutching Dany’s hands, and holding back tears. She couldn’t let herself fall apart about it all when Dany wasn’t. But her head started buzzing and something hot was rising in her chest.

“Khal abandoned me after I lost the second baby. My brother had made me feel that it was wrong to go to Missandei’s family, to make a burden of myself, so I … bounced around a lot, for a while.”

“How did you… how did you survive?” Arya felt stupid for ever thinking she’d had a difficult time in life.

“I did what I had to,” Dany answered, her voice unsettling in its quiet.

Arya knew what that meant.

She’d always had the same generalized feeling of disgust that most people do for that kind of intimate violence, for people who abuse the vulnerable, but now it was visceral, now it was real. Now it was righteous rage, and it flamed in her muscles and throbbed in her brain.

“I eventually couldn’t live that way anymore. Missandei and her family wound up becoming my family after all. They loved me, and they tolerated a lot from me when I was trying to heal myself. I went through an atheist phase, because how could this all have happened unless Allah had abandoned me, or there was no God of any kind at all? At some point, though, I realized that my faith was the only thing that tied me to myself, the only thing that was a tangible reminder of who I was before all of that. I needed it, but in a form I could swallow, which means that in some ways, no… I don’t practice the way you’re supposed to. I had to carve things out of it to make it work for who I had become. And they love me no less, and tolerate my queer, motorcycle-riding, pot-smoking, naked-praying self the way I am. I’m lucky that way. And now I have you.”

Arya didn't know what to do but give her a long, soft kiss. Then she pulled back and stared hard into her eyes.

“Did you tell all of this to Empress?”

“No. Just that my brother was abusive, and that it was very bad. No details. But she knows how you feel about me. And she knew that you would accept the pick I made.”

Arya pulled her close, felt her warmth and softness pressed against her chest, loved her as fiercely as she ever had. She found reserves of love inside herself that she didn’t know were there, and wanted to wrap Dany up in them, give her all of it, heal every last broken, hurt place she had. She understood so many things about her differently now, and felt so foolish about so many things she’d said and done. “Tell me your whole name,” she begged in a whisper.

“It’s Daniyah.”

 _Beautiful,_ she thought. “What does it mean?”

“Closer. Nearer.”

“Nearer to what?” Arya asked, fingers slipping over Dany’s hair, which looked silver in the light of the moon and street lamps.

“I don’t know. To God maybe.”

“Maybe nearer to me,” Arya answered, pulling her in tighter. “Tell me where your brother is, now, Daniyah,” Arya whispered into her ear. “I need to meet him.”

 

**

 

The other girls never heard the whole story, but they were told enough to understand that Vaiteh was someone who needed to pay for what he had done to one of their own.

There was a brief report on the news the next night about him having been found in an alleyway in Prospect Heights, broken, bloody and comatose. Arya sat burning, satisfied and yet not.  She suspected she could not have beaten him enough times to satisfy herself.  Dany wept on her shoulder for a few moments. They held each other through the night. In the morning, they made love.

They didn’t even know yet how it would change them, and they didn’t care, so long as they changed together.


	16. The Bronx is Up, but The Battery's Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa continues investigating her father's death.

“I’m going to the Bronx,” Sansa had said into her phone. “It’s totally under the radar, I’m not supposed to be going, I don’t know what I’m going to find, and it might be dangerous. Want to come?”

“Oh,” Bree had sighed, “I was just about to fold some wash and put on the Mets game, but that sounds like a lot more fun.”

And now here they were, marching down Tremont Avenue in the teeming early autumn dusk of Sunday evening, past the record stores, drugstores, nail salons and sketchy cell phone shops. Sansa had never been to the Bronx before, not really. The Starks of course had season tickets to the Yankees every year when she was growing up, and the stadium was plunked smack in the middle of the Bronx, but the projects were just square brick hulks on the other side of the highway as they drove up; the neighborhoods were just the grime-dusted blocks they had to pass through on their way to the game, seen through the tinted windows of the air-conditioned, leather-interiored town car that ferried them there.

But now she was assaulted with hip-hop thumping out of car windows and salsa booming from the shop fronts, and the smells of bus exhausts, cooking grease, fried chicken, and cinnamon churros from a truck on the corner. They passed a Chinese takeout place with bulletproof glass at the ordering counter. They glanced at each other and strode briskly on. This was not Ridgewood, Queens.

Mrs. Greenhands wasn’t as elderly as she’d sounded on the phone, but there was a deep tiredness in her eyes that seemed rooted down in her very bones. She seemed surprised at Sansa’s appearance, and even more by Bree’s. But she let them into her small apartment with its crooked floors.

“Yeah, I saw everything,” she answered frankly when Sansa asked her. “He wasn’t resisting no arrest. He had his hands up when they shot him. They shot him.. forty times, fifty times, I don’t even know. And one of the cops put their hands in his back pockets after he went down.”

“Taking something?” Sansa asked. Not unusual to check the pockets.

Mrs. Greenhands shook her head. “Didn’t look like it. Checking for something, maybe. Leaving something. Couldn’t tell if his hand had something in it when it went in, but it was empty when it came out.”

Her father’s wallet had been found, according to all four reports, in Lommy’s back pocket.

“Was there any conversation between him and the officers?”

“I heard them say he was under arrest, and tell him put his hands up. He been through the drill before, you understand. He knew damn well when you got cops with guns on you, you don’t go reaching for nothing but the sky. Probably isn’t a black boy in the Bronx that doesn’t know that.”

“So they told him to freeze, and he did, and then did you hear him say anything?”

“Not real clear, but he said he didn’t do nothing. He was still standing there with his hand up and one of them yelled, ‘he’s got a gun!’. I’m telling you right now, that was no mistake. He didn’t have nothing in his hands, and his hands were _up_.”

“Did anyone else see it go like that?”

“Yeah, you know. Couple of neighbors. But who’s going to listen to us?”

“Would you be willing to testify to that?” Sansa pressed. “Do you think those neighbors would?”

Mrs. Greenhands eyed her with suspicion. “Why do you even care?”

“Because the man they said he killed was my father,” Sansa told her. “I think it’s a lie. And I need to find the truth.”

 

**

 

Bree had to go home, so Sansa went back down to the station and looked at the file again. She looked at the names of the four officers involved, and tried to look them up in the system. One appeared to have been killed in the line of duty. Two had been given what appeared to be indefinite medical leaves. Medical discharges were not unheard-of after shooting a suspect; sometimes the mental health ramifications of killing someone were too much for an officer to return to duty for a long time, if ever. But nevertheless, three of the four were no longer in evidence in the department’s system. Only Officer Polliver remained, had since been promoted to Lieutenant, and was now working on the Special Investigations Unit, a hotly-coveted, high-prestige assignment working on —allegedly— important cases for important people. She pulled up what she could find on Polliver; what she found was a quick rise for a guy with a thin resume.

She pulled up what she could find on the two with the medical discharges. There wasn’t much remarkable in their files. They were both ex-army, had worked in plenty of tough neighborhoods and made loads of collars each. Lommy wasn’t even close to the first shooting for either of them. It made no sense.

It was getting pretty late by the time she uncovered an address and phone number that seemed loosely attached to the former Officer Clegane. It belonged to a business called “SC Transports,” but when she called, the phone rang endlessly and never went to voice mail. The address seemed to be in the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

She looked at her watch. It was almost ten. She might be a cop with a badge and a gun, but she still wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of skulking around the Navy Yards alone at ten p.m. on a Sunday.

But tomorrow was Monday, and she’d have to be back on the biker thing. With Frey around, she felt less comfortable nosing around in things that had nothing to do with what she was supposed to be here for.

 

**

 

She kept smoothing her jacket with her palms to feel the reassuring bulk of her sidearm as she walked briskly among the rows of looming, square metal structures by the water. While it was true that ships came in at all times of the day and night, right now the place was pretty goddamned dead. She kept her breathing steady, counting the steps from one pale yellow circle of sodium-lamp light to the next, listening to the distant whisper of the highway, ticking off the numbers on the sides of the rows of corrugated metal warehouses, looking for Building 113. It was closing in on eleven p.m. at this point, and she didn’t even know what she was looking for.

She finally found it, all the way down at the end, furthest from the dock and the giant cranes. There were a number of placards for different businesses on the side of it, SC Transport being the smallest, and written by hand. She saw a grey van parked around the side of the building, with the same name stenciled on it in black. She walked around, but the only windows on this building were too high up to be of any use. She walked back over and decided to peer into the van.

It sat silently. It’s windows were slightly tinted, but not enough to obscure the interior. She stood up on tiptoe and peered in, her heart beating hard and loud in her ears, though she wasn’t sure why. She saw a couple of cushioned seat covers, a metal grate that closed off the cargo area in the back, an empty coffee cup, a nudie magazine lying open on the front seat. _What the hell am I even expecting to find, I need to come here at a time when this Clegane guy might actually be around, instead of-_

“You looking for something?” a male voice growled in her ear. Two huge, heavy meathooks of hands spun her around by the shoulders and threw her back up against the van. She found herself staring into a heavily-scarred face with blazing eyes, jawline half-covered in a scruffy beard, and surrounded by a tangle of dark, greasy hair.

By the time he’d finished spinning her around to face him, though, her hand had already flown to her waist, drawn her Glock, and thrust the muzzle up under his chin. She met his gaze with as much cool as she could find, watching him process the situation. His scarred face slowly broke into something almost like a smile. Or a grimace. She wasn’t sure.

He let go, put his hands up and backed away.  "Alright," he said, much calmer now.

“This your van?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“You’re Clegane?”

“Who’s asking?”

Her free hand crept into her coat and pulled out her badge.  She held it up, her gun still trained on him. “Detective Stark. NYPD. Let’s try again. Is this your van?”

He shook his head and began to shake out a wheezy kind of laugh. “Unfuckingbelievable,” he exclaimed. “Yeah, that’s my van. Yeah, I’m Clegane. And you’re Ned Stark’s brat. I heard you were a cop, I couldn’t believe it.” He wheezed and laughed some more. “I still don’t believe it. You can put the piece away, sweetie, I’m not looking for any trouble.”  His voice was like gravel and he had that outer boroughs accent that had become so familiar to her ears.  Old-school, working-class Queens Irish, she guessed.

Sansa held steady for a moment. “I want to talk to you about—“

“I know why you’re here," he interrupted irritably. "And I don’t have shit to say to you, ok? Not about your daddy, not about the shooting. I got a shipping business, I’m retired from the force, and I want to live out the rest of my miserable life without any more trouble.”

She looked at him, coolly assessing him. He hadn’t gotten the plum assignment. He hadn’t gotten “killed in the line of duty.” He’d gotten medical leave. He’d cooperated, but she suspected probably under duress. “You didn’t want to set that kid up, did you. If you'd been a true believer, you’d have gotten SIU just like Polliver. Right? So who wanted it?”

“You’re looking for answers that are above both our pay grades,” he grumbled.

“Do you know, or don’t you?” she persisted.

Clegane shook his head, looking exhausted, angry, and haunted. “My orders came from where my orders always came from. If you want to know more about where _his_ orders came from, that’s another story. I can’t help you. But if I learned one thing when I was on the force, I learned the old saying is true. Most of the time, you follow the money, it’ll lead you to the right place.”

He looked around nervously.

“I SAID I GOT NOTHING TO TELL YOU!” he shouted suddenly. “Now get the fuck out of here before you get us both ‘killed in action.’”

She nodded once, and stuffed her badge and gun back where they belonged as she jogged back the way she came, into the night.


	17. The Low Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The deputy mayor reacts to Margaery's distraction gambit.

Jaime had the misfortune of being in his sister’s office when the young aide came in, dropped that morning's issue of the Borough Record on her desk without a word, walked out. Cersei sat there looking at it for a moment, processing what she was seeing.

“What is it?” he asked.

She held up the paper. His sister’s late husband had been a womanizer, everyone knew it, but to have supposed evidence of one of his bastard children pop up, under the context of a drug arrest, and even worse, under a headline that seemed designed to hang this kid and everything he represented around Tommy’s neck…

He winced. “But it’s the Record. That’s barely even a real paper.”

She fixed him with a chilly stare. She stood up, agitated. “No, it’s not a real paper, this Hunt guy is worse than Matt Drudge. And that’s great, when he’s leaking something _we_ want. But he doesn’t care who he hurts.”

Jaime decided not to point out that this was a trait his sister shared with Hyle Hunt.

“And in a day or two,” she finished, pacing around the desk, “the respectable papers will start to pick this up and our phones are going to be ringing off the hook.”

“Well, isn’t that what press secretaries are for? Let them deal with the fallout?”

Cersei shook her head at him. “No, this has to get stomped out before it even gets to that point. We need to shove something big out there, right away. Roberto was a piece of shit. A useful piece of shit at times, but a piece of shit. I am _not_ having his sins get hung around Tommy’s neck to tar his administration before it’s even had the chance to do anything substantial," she fumed.  "That boy hasn’t done a wrong thing in his life. I’m going to go piss on that son of a bitch’s grave when this is over with.”

He wanted to quip, _Don’t you do that regularly anyway?_ He wanted to point out that Tommy, now in his thirties, was hardly a “boy” anymore. But he saw her seams starting to fray and grabbed her hand as she paced past his chair, trying to unwind her before she got too out of control. He had always been the one to settle her rages, the way she would spin upwards at any perceived slight. She looked down at him with an energy that crackled and spat like an exposed wire, and he worried whether he was going to be able to always do that for her. Whether or not this article was an attack, he knew she would respond as if it was. Nobody wanted to be in the blast radius when she did.

Before Tommy had appointed her his deputy mayor, she’d run his mayoral and city council campaigns, and before that, she’d had her own consultancy and run several other campaigns. Having cut her teeth on a number of statewide and national campaigns, she was known as ferocious and consumed with winning, willing to go dirty faster than most other campaign managers. She was effective and dedicated (in a G. Gordon Liddy kind of way, he supposed); she had a PhD in below-the-belt push-polling and a Master’s in cover-ups and distraction. Nothing was off limits, and everything was fair game: someone’s mental health history in their teen years, unsubstantiated rumors about their sexuality. It didn’t matter. Only the victory mattered.

It sometimes saddened Jaime to remember how sweet she was when they were small children, curled up with flashlights in a blanket fort that they’d built together, while he patiently tolerated her brushing his hair, and he rubbed his little fingers over the scabs on her perennially-skinned knees. Their father never liked that she was so rough and tumble, and was constantly steering her toward pursuits he deemed more feminine. The only sport he’d let her play was tennis. So she became as fierce an opponent as anyone had ever seen, playing with the same ravenous urge to win as he saw in her campaigns now. But before that, on those afternoons sharing pilfered cookies under the quilt, while she read his favorite books to him, she had been sweet.

She kept some measure of that carefree sweetness for a while. He suspected some part of her wished she had held onto it. Even today, she still kept that picture of herself and Roberto in her office, taken right after their wedding, of the two of them with feathered eighties hair and dazzling smiles, sitting on matching Honda Goldwings. It had been back during that brief moment when motorcycles were a fashion accessory that all of New York’s wealthy had to have. Jaime liked that picture. She looked so natural and easy, beside her handsome Argentinian husband, straddling that bike as if she’d been born to it. Something toxic was already brewing in her back then, he knew, but that picture captured a breeziness that she once had, the memory of which Jaime still hung onto for dear life.

But he supposed he owed his life to the knife-wielding politico she was now, not the glowing newlywed, nor the soft-hearted tomboy she’d once been. His head still swam with echoes of her voice, calm but urgent, from that night as he’d half-sobbed to her into his cell phone. She was a professional at crisis management:

_“Listen to me… I have done this more times than I can count... Don’t go back up through the lobby, use one of the shipping and receiving entrances downstairs... Keep your fucking head down… How much money do you have? Good. Flag a yellow cab, have them take you to Dad’s. Yes, to Casterly. Yes, they fucking **will** go to Westchester, if you give them two hundred dollars. Call me again when you get there.”_

There was love in her, still. He knew it. He saw it. He heard it. She would kill for it.

“Come with me,” she ordered, suddenly calm. “I need to go talk to your nephew.”

 

**

 

Tommy looked pained as he looked back and forth between his mother and his uncle.

“You can’t be serious. It would never get past the city council and if it did, I wouldn’t sign it. It’s nuts.”

Cersei, standing in front her son’s desk, leaned forward and bit the words off one by one: “This was an opening shot. Someone is doing opposition research.”

Tommy sighed heavily. “You’re overreacting. This is just Hunt trying to sell some papers. This story will exhaust itself inside of a week if we let it.”

Cersei snorted. “That’s what John Kerry said about the swiftboating story. Do you remember how well that worked out for him?”

Tommy shook his head. “Look, I want to focus on actual governing. I don’t want to push some stupid show-bill through the City Council just for the sake of creating a sideshow to distract people from _this_ sideshow.”

Jaime knew Tommy was right. Cersei wanted the story about Tommy’s bastard half-brother swept out of the headlines as fast as possible as much for her own wounded pride as for Tommy’s administration.

“Tommy, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair right now if it weren’t for me. You need to do it.”

“Fine, a big show-bill, but why this? Why can’t it be decriminalizing pot or … or lowering a tax on something somewhere?” Poor Tommy looked like he wanted to tear his hair out.

“Because those things aren’t going to get the attention that this will. We need a circus.”

Jaime gently inserted himself into their heated back and forth. “Are you sure you want to court something so controversial so early in his administration?”

Cersei shot him a frosty look. “Don't you have a charity board meeting to go to?”

Jaime bit back his comment. He was supposed to be there to back her up, he knew, but he had to agree with Tommy. He didn’t know if it was a great idea.

Tommy looked genuinely miserable. “I don’t like the idea of legalizing harassment.”

“You’re not legalizing harassment, you’re protecting free speech.”

“You know that’s bullshit, Mom. I don’t even care about this as an issue, and neither do you!”

“Of course I don’t! I care about making sure that YOU get another term in that chair!” Cersei slammed a fist down on Tommy’s desk, grabbed his tie and leaned in closer to him, her eyes blazing. “Look. Maggie Tyrell is a bleeding-heart. She will find a loophole. We’ll leave a few nice big ones for her. You keep your conservative cred, and nothing really changes.”

Tommy shrugged in resignation, mostly because he wasn't cut out for this kind of fighting, and not with his mother, of all people. “Fine. I don’t think we have the votes, but if you can twist enough arms to get it done, I’ll sign it.”


	18. Third of Four Goes Walking

_Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk._  
–Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf  


 

Bran had bought his bike hoping that he and Arya would spend more time together. It had worked, sort of, although not to the extent he’d hoped. But the bike had led him to Meera, who was fast becoming a jones he couldn’t shake and didn’t want to.

She came sometimes to his basketball practices when she could. He could spend an hour on the phone with her and not even feel it go by, debating the merits of everything from their preferred translations of Petrarchan sonnets (ride or die for Sir Thomas Wyatt, obviously), to which Darren was the better one on “Bewitched” (Dick York, of course). She worked at the Strand – because where else would she work but the best bookstore in the city. At least a couple of days a week, he’d meet her after work, take her out for dinner and then they’d go riding for a bit. For a little while they kept up the silly pantomime that she and Arya “may or may not” have been friends, but it didn’t last longer than fifteen seconds into the first double date they had with Arya and Dany, as they all dissolved into snickering at the table of the diner where they’d met for a late dinner.

He couldn’t believe it, but now, as he realized that half the summer had crept by, he found he was actually thinking about writing again.

He’d collapsed in on himself after his accident, and hadn’t written in almost four years, but Meera had gotten him brimming with words that pinged around inside him, wanting to get out. He wanted to write about his accident, his father, his bike; he wanted to write about her, and the way he felt when he was inside her and moving together with her. They never stopped looking at each other when they were in bed together, clear-eyed and smiling at each other as if they couldn’t believe their luck. She made him feel … awake.

And along with all that, he burned for more freedom, more autonomy. Being on the bike was glorious, but it felt like a tease and it was always a bit deflating getting back into his chair.

He’d casually confessed this to Jaime at lunch one day.

Naturally, Jaime said, “Well, I can put you in touch with this guy at MIT,” and then pulled up a video on his phone of a TED talk by this guy who designed and built his own prosthetics. Like Bran, he’d lost both his legs below the knee in a climbing accident, and now there he was, standing on bionic legs he’d designed and built himself, talking about how he was back climbing again because of them. He had a few different types of prosthetics for that purpose, including one set he’d designed that had spikes instead of “feet”, so that he could wedge in and get footholds in crags in the rocks where able-bodied climbers couldn’t. It took several minutes for Bran’s head to stop spinning.

“Mom,” he’d said when Catelyn got home that evening, looking weary as usual, “I need to become a cyborg.”

She looked at him curiously, and for the first time in a while, he felt as if she was actually looking _at_ him. She thought for a moment. “Alright, then. What does that cost these days?”

“Oh, I don’t know, probably about fifty grand,” he replied casually. He pulled up the video on his phone and showed her a few minutes of the TED talk.

She smiled, told him to go ahead and get things started, and joked that when he started wearing the new legs, she planned on calling him Third of Four. He started working immediately with his physical therapist on strength and balance. It was all coming together.

 

When he finally got them, they were something to behold. They would look like legs underneath pants or black socks, but he felt as though he didn’t want to hide them; maybe he’d even have his riding gear cut to show them. They were gorgeous, elegant machines, made of shiny, lightweight metal alloys, black carbon fiber, and clear polymers. The feet looked like minimalist drawings of a foot; just a graceful, swooping line. It took some time to get comfortable on them but he stepped up his physical therapy schedule, anxious to get steady on them and take them out into the world. But summer was dissolving into fall, and he’d probably have a bit of a chance to wear them with shorts at least a few times before it was too cold.

The first time he took them for a spin in public was when they went to one of Arya’s tournaments. They’d gotten seats that were at the back of the tier they were in, so he wouldn’t have to wrangle with a lot of steps. He sat in the end seat, with Meera next to him, Dany beside her, and Catelyn furthest in. It felt like a real family outing, which hadn’t happened in a while. He actually had to struggle to recall when Catelyn last went to a tournament.

It was hard for him to tell how his mother felt about Dany and Meera; she’d been around both of them a few times at this point, and she wasn’t chilly the way she could be toward someone she didn’t care for, nor was it exactly uncomfortable, but she didn’t speak much. Maybe it was just a lot for her to process. He hadn’t had a girlfriend in such a long while. And even though he knew she was pro-gay rights in the abstract, he supposed that maybe it was a different thing to take it completely in stride when one of your children was gay. Different generation and all that.

He watched Dany kiss each of Arya’s gloves before she went downstairs to get ready for her first fight. _Like a lady kissing her knight’s sword before he rides off into battle_ , he thought with amusement.

The tournament atmosphere was familiar to him by now, as he’d been to several. They were holding this one in a small arena in the Sports Center at Chelsea Piers. If he had to guess, he’d say about 500 spectators were milling around the place. A fair number of were families who, like them, were clearly there to support a sister or daughter who was competing in one of the three rings that they had set up in the middle of the floor. In all of the early rounds, they kept the house lights up and it was a lot like a carnival or a convention, with a few people glued to the action in the rings, but most roaming around, chatting, getting snacks and the like. He noticed a fairly high ratio of girl-girl couples sitting together, or walking around holding hands, and a lot of women who weren’t paired up, but just plain looked like butch lesbians. He didn’t remember seeing so many at other tournaments, but suspected that he just hadn’t had a reason to take note of it before.

Once they’d settled into their seats, Catelyn got up and announced she was going to go get some snacks.

“Actually,” Bran offered, pushing himself up onto his new feet, “why don’t Meera and I get them?”

Catelyn paused for a moment and looked at him, standing there as he had not done for years. “Are you sure?”

Bran nodded.

Catelyn paused, skeptical for a moment, but agreed. “Don’t let him take more than he can handle,” she warned Meera.

Meera smiled, and as they walked away, she said quietly in his ear, “If I did that, you wouldn’t be dating me.”

The concession stand offered a mix of the expected (soda, overpriced popcorn, and hot dogs) and the strangely high-end and offbeat (lattes, vegetable samosas, and focaccia). While they waited line, Bran asked, “You know I never asked you, but how exactly did a _Puertoriquena_ end up with the last name Reed?”

She smiled. “My great-grandfather was English. Trevor Reed. He was a biologist. He came to PR to study some flora or fauna or something. Married my great-grandmother Amara, and stayed there. They had three sons. And every Reed boy since then, down to my father Ignacio, married a local girl, too. So… you don’t see much British in me, do you?”

Bran shrugged. “Wouldn’t presume, I guess.”

She leaned closer to him. “Do you know what the lesson is?”

“No.”

“One white boy stands no chance against three Puerto Rican women. Remember that,” she said, with a tone of playful warning.

“You and your friends gonna come beat my ass?” he joked.

“Maybe, if you get out of line,” she answered, giving him a peck just next to his mouth.

He was so distracted by her that he failed to take note of his space and bumped into the person ahead of them in line; a tall, older redheaded woman in black leather, who turned around and gave him a piercing stare.

“I’m sorry,” he immediately apologized, gesturing to his new legs. He was wearing his board shorts, so anyone looking at him could really see all of them. “I’m still getting used to these things.”

She gave him a long look that made him inexplicably uncomfortable as her ice-blue eyes raked back and forth between his face and his legs. He could feel Meera set on edge next to him. “I’m sorry,” he said again. There was something familiar about her but he couldn’t place her.

“It’s alright,” she finally answered. “Those are interesting. Where did you get them?”

“Uh, a guy at MIT made them.”

She smiled, and it was just as unsettling. “Very nice. Good luck with them.” Then she turned around and stepped up to the counter to order.

“Why do I feel like I know her?” he whispered to Meera after she’d gone.

“You’ve probably seen ads for her shows in the paper,” Meera answered.

“Shows?”

“Yeah. She’s a performance artist. Sort of. She sings, and she has a band, but it’s also partly performance art. Stuff about gender issues, and like, technology and the breakdown of human connection… She’s got kind of a cult following. She sells out Galapagos in Williamsburg like all the time.” The biggest hipster club in the biggest hipster neighborhood in Brooklyn. Too many ironic trucker hats and tiny fedoras for Bran’s liking.

“Oh…” Now that she said it, he had some vague memory of having seen her face in ads in local papers. “What’s her name again?”

“I forget what her real name is but she performs under the name The Red Witch.”

 

**

 

They went back to their seats, laden with snacks and drinks. It had been difficult to settle on a particular direction with the daunting variety offered, so they wound up buying too much.

He was pleased to see Dany and his mother talking quietly to one another, in what seemed like a very deep conversation as they watched a match between Obara Sand, one of Arya’s frequent rivals, and a young Russian fighter who was trying gamely, but was clearly going to go down.

Arya’s first bunch of matches went easily in her favor. Arya popped out a couple of times to say hi, with her coach, Syrio, following behind her to make sure she stayed on point and didn’t linger too long. They broke up the time between Arya’s fights by slipping out for little walks along the pier and admiring some of the bikes that had parked alongside theirs.

Several hours later, it was the final match. Arya was up against that girl, Obara Sand, who vexed her every time they faced one another.

The lights went down.


	19. The Fist Adds Some Fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Empress makes another pick. The club grows. Arya starts to consider the big picture.

_"And what is good, Phaedrus,_   
_And what is not good—_   
_Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"_   
_–Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig_

 

Arya was never happy about facing Obara Sand. She complained about her illegal moves, but the truth was, Sand always seemed to have a jump on her strategy, or was just moving a little faster. But Arya came into the ring tonight, determined that she was not going to let herself get beaten.

The house lights were down, and the center ring was light in white from several floods above it. While about half the large crowd from earlier in the day had cleared out, those who remained were fully engaged. She was glad that she had such a posse here today, but didn’t want to disappoint them.

She and Syrio had discussed a different strategy. “More kicking,” he’d ordered. “More moving around. Don’t let her get in close with a lot of punching, because that’s it. That’s when she pulls out those bullshit Krav Maga holds that the judges never see.”

Obara Sand came into the ring in shiny red trunks with a snake or something twisting up the side. They nodded toward one another, took their places, and the bell rang. Obara was aggressive, immediately coming at her with one-two combos and roundhouse kicks. Arya blocked, but kept moving back, trying to make Obara chase her around a little, before her leg would flash out for a front kick, and then she would slip to the left or right. She felt like she was moving faster than Obara this time, but couldn’t be sure. When the first round ended, Syrio warned her, “She can tell what you’re doing and she’s betting on you tiring out before she does. Slow down a little. You can afford to take a hit or two, just keep kicking and don’t let her get you into a lockup.”

Arya went back in. She could hear Dany and Meera yelling for her from several rows back. She smiled and raised a glove toward them before going back in.

The second round was tough. She landed more blows, but she took more, too. In between rounds, Syrio told her, “Alright, Arya. This is it. Last round. You’ve done a good job playing defense but now you just have to get in there and score on her. If you want to play a little peek-a-boo, do it. Don’t hold back. This is it.”

She thought of beating up Dany’s brother, and went back into the ring. Obara was expecting her to be aggressive, but this was probably more than she had banked on. For once, Arya felt like she had Obara on the defensive, and not in a way that was of her own choosing.

When the final bell rang, they took a long time tallying the scores. A couple of the judges seemed to be arguing amongst themselves. After a moment, though, they called the match in Obara’s favor.

Syrio patted her on the back. “It’s alright. You did good. This was the right approach, this is how we look at this from now on.”

Arya went and hit the showers. She knew it had been a close match, but she really thought that she’d dominated the third round. As she toweled off, she heard her phone make a _ping_ sound, alerting her to a text message. She dried her hands off and picked it up the phone. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she whispered.

A text from Empress. In all caps.

“MY NEXT PICK = OBARA.”

Arya texted back, also in all caps. “NO FUCKING WAY,” and then stood there in her towel, waiting for the reply.

It came. _Ping._ “We need someone else with training.”

Arya tried not to be furious. “Fought a dozen people today. How about one of them?” She put the phone down and started getting dressed.

 _Ping._ “Not half as good as her. Team of rivals. Your chance to be Lincoln-ish.”

Arya sighed disgustedly. She knew enough to know there was little point to arguing. She texted back one more time. “We don't even know if she rides.”

 _Ping._ “She does.”

Arya didn’t bother asking how she knew. Empress fucking knew everything. She probably knew she was going to pick Obara before she’d even walked in here today.

 _Ping._ "She’s parked outside. Hurry up.”

Arya cursed, finished getting dressed, and jogged outside with her bag over her shoulder.

Obara was outside, getting on a silver Kawasaki Vulcan. She was waving goodbye to two guys who were walking arm in arm; one of them looked like her dad, whom Arya had seen at other matches. She caught sight of Arya, and stopped. “Come to finish things?”

“I’d love to,” Arya answered frankly, “but that’s not why I’m here.”

Obara raised an eyebrow. “Well, your girlfriend looked cute, but I’m not interested in a three-way,” she prodded.

“Wrong again.”

Obara threw her hands up. “Then what, Stark?”

Arya walked closer, looking at her bike. “I didn’t know you rode.”

Obara nodded. “Yeah. You?”

Arya pointed to her Indian. “That’s mine.”

Obara whistled appreciatively. “Very pretty.” She looked back at Arya. “So?”

“Well… It wasn’t up to me, but… you’ve been picked. There’s sort of a… a thing I do, me and some of my friends, on our free time. We help women. Women who can’t help themselves. Abused women, victimized women.”

Obara looked at her strangely. “What, like you guys run a shelter or something?”

Arya shook her head. “No. We have a… different way of helping them.”

Obara’s eyes narrowed. “And you picked me. Why?”

“I didn’t pick you,” Arya said again. “The lady who runs the show picked you. She was impressed with you. And she knows you ride, like the rest of us do. Her reasons aren’t always clear for why she wants someone, but she’s never wrong.” She said that as as if she was just remembering it. “Maybe she wants you because your dad is ex-Mossad, I don’t know.”

Obara laughed. “Everyone makes so much out of that, he was just a programmer! He wasn’t doing any spy shit.” She shook her head, and then surveyed Arya for a moment, thinking it over. “Helping abused women, huh?”

Arya nodded. “We all ride. Boss lady bankrolls everything. I can’t say more right now. But I think you get me?”

Obara nodded. “I think I do.”

“You interested?”

Obara nodded.

 

 

Adding Obara made their party six instead of five. Since Ygritte had joined them, they’d been on a few more of what Empress referred to as “outings”: she’d been choosing targets that had managed to make the news, buried somewhere in the middle of the paper; not ones that were so big that they’d be under any sort of guard. She’d also been choosing targets that she’d personally known about for years but had never been in the position to do anything about. Every one was chosen carefully, scoped and researched extensively, and brought down swiftly.

Asha was a natural leader, and Empress trusted her to lead the girls on their outings: to remember all the information she needed to remember, keep her eye on the ball, and use everyone’s skills and talents in the most effective ways. But they’d still been working small: one deserving target at a time.

But now, bringing the group from five to six, it was going to mean a change of dynamics. They could change groupings and tailor them to different targets. They could go after multiple targets at once, particularly with another trained fighter like Obara on board. As the girls grew more experienced, they got better at getting in and getting out.

It was tense between Obara and Dany at first, but for the time being, everyone agreed to focus on the objective. After all, Arya reminded Dany, she didn’t even know for a fact that it was Mossad that killed her parents, and besides, even if it was, it wasn’t like Obara herself was Mossad. Arya had made a point of not knowing what her politics were where that was concerned. Besides, like Dany, Obara had grown up here since she was young, and was just as much an American girl.

Empress added a few more girls: Jorelle and Lyanna Mormont, the two youngest daughters of NYPD Brooklyn Borough Commander Maege Mormont; they had washed out of the Police Academy and were working as security guards at the Manhattan Mall. Arya had her doubts about them, too; they seemed rowdy and undisciplined, and too close to the NYPD for her tastes. But it quickly became clear that they had access to places and information that would make things easier going forward, from identifying targets in the first place, to gaining access to buildings and going undetected when they needed to. The Mormont girls weren’t cut out to follow the path that their mother had done, but they nevertheless inherited her iron-clad commitment to justice being served, and Phaedra’s Fist was the means of delivery that best suited them.

As was becoming Empress’s way, she allowed Obara and the Mormont girls one pick each when they first joined; it invested them in the group and invested the group in them. Obara wanted at first to go after a political target, but Empress nixed that, saying that the group wasn’t ready for that. So, Obara chose a pair of guys she’d known at NYU: a couple of young Wall Street bankers, fratboy jocks who had gotten away with raping a few of the girls she’d known while at school there. At the time, the disciplinary process at the school had been a mess and couldn’t be relied on to do much of anything. And the one girl with the nerve to press charges wound up getting harassed out of school. It was an easy pick, and one that the girls could get behind.

Jorelle and Lyanna chose to go after a serial abuser they’d heard their mother grumbling about; a guy who various precincts had arrested time and again, but they simply couldn’t get anything to stick on him.

Empress had an uncanny ability to make picks that added something that, once it was there, was hard to imagine the group without.  It wasn’t just the skill sets, either. Arya had noticed that Ygritte wasn’t just a good choice because she was crazy and liked to fight; she was willing to let her crazy be channeled by Asha, and probably nobody but Asha. Watching them together, Arya noticed that Ygritte also sometimes pushed Asha, in her way, to be more of a leader. How could Empress’s gut have predicted the subtleties of that dynamic?

Obara signed on with enthusiasm, but it was clear that she was also restless from the very start – that beating up individual rapists and abusers was fine with her, but that she wanted to go for bigger targets that would send more of a message. Arya had to wonder if Empress had expected that too… that Obara had political inclinations that were in line with a bigger direction that Empress hadn’t yet chosen to reveal to them.

And the Mormont girls? Their access was useful, and their skills with their fists and weapons of various kinds made them welcome on any outing. But again, there was another level of “fit”; they were loud and funny, and they made the clubhouse before an outing feel almost like a party. They even managed to get typically quiet Meera laughing and making dirty jokes while they sparred playfully in a corner of the room, playing goofy music from the nineties like Chumbawamba and Black 47. They brought a merriment to what Phaedra’s Fist was doing. Outings began to feel less like a grim responsibility and more like a joyous opportunity to right wrongs, an opportunity that they were fortunate to have. They were more than righteous warriors; they were happy ones. And the joy they took in their work grew along with their body count.


	20. Sansa Goes Right Side Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revelations of all kinds for Sansa.

Sansa couldn’t stop thinking about Lommy’s mother, and the weird conversation with Clegane at the Navy Yards. _Follow the money,_ he’d said. _My orders came from where my orders always came from,_ he’d said.

Even though it was absurdly late, she went back up to Bree’s that night after leaving Clegane, because she was feeling too edgy to be alone.  Lately it seemed like Bree was the only thing that made her feel at ease.

“Whoever was captain at that time was probably dirty,” Bree reasoned after Sansa told the whole story. “Was it Frey?”

Sansa shook her head. “I don’t know. But I guess I’m going to have to find out tomorrow. I don’t know if we can assume that it went as high up as that, but-”

“But Polliver got SIU. Lieutenants can’t hand that kind of thing out.”

Sansa nodded. Bree was right.  Sansa pressed her palms to the side of her head and groaned, "Aaaargh, this whole thing is unbelievable."

Bree got up.  "I know what you need."

She warmed up some sakei and put on some Billie Holliday and they drank and danced in the living room to her woozy, swingy version of “All of Me.” They weren’t much good at actual dance steps, other than Bree occasionally managing to dip Sansa backwards in a way that felt only a little clumsy. But it eventually just ended up with them leaning on each other with Sansa’s head on Bree’s chest and Bree’s arms around her waist.

Not looking up, her eyes closed, Sansa murmured, “Are we a thing?”

She felt Bree’s chest move a little as she chuckled. “A thing?”

“Yeah, you know. A thing.”

They shuffled and swayed together to the music, listening to Billie’s crooning for a moment. “I don’t know. Can we be a thing if we aren’t sleeping together?” Bree finally asked.

“We sleep together all the time,” Sansa joked.

“You know what I mean.”

Sansa sighed. “I don’t think anybody gets to decide that except us. All I know is, I feel right-side-up when I’m with you.” There was another long quiet, and they went still. They stood there with their arms around each other, listening to the music, Bree’s chin resting on top of Sansa’s head.

The music finally stopped and it was silent except for the sounds of Podric scrabbling around on the kitchen tiles, battling a rubber mouse.

“I love you, San.”

Sansa looked up. “Yeah?”

Bree nodded. “Yeah. I’m gonna tape your picture up in my locker.” She tugged on Sansa’s hair affectionately, the way she often did, and added awkwardly, “I mean, I don’t want to have sex with you or anything, but… I don’t think I’ve ever wanted that from anyone. Um… Is that OK?”

Sansa squeezed her tighter, listened to her heartbeat. “God, are you kidding? That’s better than OK. It’s perfect.” She stood on tiptoe and ruffled Bree’s short hair. “I’ve never wanted it either. Tried a couple of times, but…”   She made a gagging face, and then shook her head. “Anyway.” They spent a moment grinning stupidly at each other. “Anyway, I think I’ve been in love with you for a while.”

Bree grabbed her and swept her up off her feet, and started carrying her toward the bedroom. Sansa shrieked and started laughing. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m carrying you off to bed. For some serious, cop-on-cop snuggling.”

“Oh my!” Sansa exclaimed, like a Southern belle who was getting the vapors.

“And then maybe, if you’re feeling really frisky, we’ll take out the laser pointer and mess with Podrick’s head a little.”

“Goodness!”

They changed into sweats and tee shirts, crawled into bed together and curled up comfortably.

As Sansa drifted off, Bree mumbled in her ear, “And by the way… Debussy is unlistenable.”

Sansa smiled. “Mmm-hmm,” she answered sleepily.

Bree yawned, long and relaxed, and settled in against Sansa’s back. “And deKooning’s women are the…” _(yawn)_ “…ugliest goddamn things I’ve ever seen.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Goodnight, San.”

“Goodnight, baby,” Sansa yawned, auditioning it for the first time. It felt good. Really good.

 

***

 

Shae dropped a stack of folders on Sansa’s tiny desk on top of the copy of The Borough Record that was sitting there.  _Just as well,_ Sansa thought, _covering up that stupid headline about the mayor's bastard brother, as if he was somehow responsible for his father having been a philanderer._ “Morning, Detective! Have a nice weekend?”

Sansa honestly didn’t know how to answer. The benefit, Margaery Tyrell’s flirting, Lommy, Clegane, and then last night with Bree… Jesus. “Um, it was… interesting. How was yours?”

Shae grinned. “I had a pretty good date.”

Sansa nodded with approval. “Good for you. Tall, dark and handsome?”

Shae laughed. “Nope. Short, blonde and filthy rich. Works just as well for me.”

Sansa looked at the stack of folders on the desk. “So, what’s all this?”

“Well, it’s reports from some of those Brooklyn and Queens biker cases you were interested in, the older ones from late last year and earlier this year. The photography’s a little iffy because they faxed it over but I can see about getting better copies if you see something you want to get a better look at.”

“Good job. That was fast.” Sansa was impressed.

Shae shrugged. “I know a lot of the kids over at those precincts. Went to the academy with half of them.”

“Thanks, Shae.”

“Oh, one other thing. Those other Manhattan precincts? Most of those victims had the same kind of priors as these.  All of them went to trial. And all of them either walked, or got suspended sentences.”

This had to be a vigilante thing. Some bunch of delusional guys on bikes going out to clean up society. Who the hell knew what kind of narrative they’d constructed for themselves? They might just go around beating people up… or they could have watched “Taxi Driver” one too many times and be getting bigger ideas. “Thanks, Shae. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

Sansa sighed. She flipped open the folders and started flipping through them, but she had trouble paying attention. She had to know one thing.

She walked over to Shae’s desk. “Hey, Shae? How long have you worked here?”

“About four years?”

“Was Captain Frey the C.O. when you started here?”

“Uh, no. He was X.O. and got promoted a little while after I started.”

“Who was C.O. here before that?”

“Actually, it was Inspector Mormont. Well, Commissioner Mormont, now.”

Sansa nodded. “Thanks.”

Commissioner Mormont. What the hell was she getting herself into?

She shoved the thought out of her mind and went back to the biker folders that Shae had handed her. A handful were assaults, and appeared to be related to a very specific, very public gang. And most of those perps were still doing time, which meant it was unlikely that they were involved in the recent assaults.

With a sigh, she popped open the folders on the rash of vandalism and breaking & entering cases, figuring she was probably barking up the wrong tree with all of it, but that it was worth a cursory glance anyhow. A diner, a Chinese joint, a laundromat… a lot of broken glass and destroyed property. Someone was really angry about something, she mused. Most of these businesses were small and didn’t have any security camera footage, and there were a few not especially reliable or specific witness statements that amounted to “multiple perps on bikes,” in numbers ranging from four to eight. She shook her head. Whatever this was, it was troubling, but it probably had nothing to do with what was going on now.

She was about to close the last folder when she noticed that there were a few stills from security camera video of the street out in front of the particular business that had been targeted. She pulled them out and looked at them.

The photos weren’t particularly good quality, being faxes of stills of video.

But she could clearly see four bikes.           

And she could see that one of them looked for all the world like a vintage Indian.


	21. Nowhere to Go but Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catelyn gives us a little window onto how the family unraveled after Ned's death.

Catelyn sat at the kitchen table, drumming her long fingers on it while she ruminated, espresso in hand. It had been more than six months ago that she’d been sitting in this same spot, talking on the phone with her sister Lysa, fretting about Arya.

“I gave her Ned’s old bike, hoping it might be a way for us to connect,” she’d said to Lysa, “and I was glad she found a club, but… I don’t know. She’s into something bad. I know it. She comes in at all hours of the night, and sometimes not at all. She comes home tracking broken glass on her boots. She has these marks and scratches on her hands sometimes that don’t look like what she’d get from sparring at the gym… I don’t know what she’s up to but I know, I just _know_ , I’m going to get the ‘come bail me out’ phone call. I feel it.”

Ned often jokingly referred to Lysa as Catelyn’s emotionally unstable doppelganger. While that was probably unfair to both of them, it was undeniable that when they stood together, you could nearly take them for twins, and when you engaged them on the right subjects, they were equally sharp and well-educated. Lysa’s face showed more wear and tear than Catelyn’s; she’d struggled with bipolar disorder since they were both very young, as well as shades of paranoia and delusion from time to time. Their relationship had never been easy; Lysa was full of moods, and often of resentment at what she perceived as the easy time Catelyn had had in life. Catelyn had honed her patience and skill at dealing with volatile personalities on years of growing up with Lysa. But they were still sisters who would stand against the world if it came to that, and with Ned gone, there weren’t too many people Cat felt she could talk to about this.

“Well, Cat,” Lysa sighed, and Catelyn could hear the eyeroll over the phone, “I think in general, you and Ned didn’t make too many mistakes when you were raising those kids. But here’s where I’m going to say I told you so; you treated her ADD and sensory issues like a behavior problem instead of something that needed meds, and I know you don’t like to hear it, but you guys were just wrong about that one.”

Catelyn sighed. Growing up with Lysa, whose problems had been so severe, had probably blinded her to the different nature of Arya’s needs, which had still been no less real. “Yes, you’re probably right. I just don’t know how I’m going to handle things when I do finally get that call.”

“Well….” Lysa paused. “Do you want me to handle it?”

“What, you mean get her out of trouble?”

“Well, yeah, that. If I can. John’s been in the ground a while at this point, so I’m not sure how much I can do in that regard.” Lysa was the widow of a very prominent judge and it was possible that his name, if dropped in the right places, might be able to pull Arya out of a scrape. “But what I mean is, do you want me to talk to her?”

Catelyn hesitated. While she and Lysa spoke on a semi-regular basis, the kids hadn’t seen Lysa in ages, because her energy was so erratic. Cat didn’t think it was good for them, especially when they’d been younger. “I don’t know, Lysa… She barely knows you. It’s been a very long time since she’s seen you.”

“Well, that wasn’t really my decision,” Lysa snapped. “But still, Cat. I have a perspective you don’t. Maybe I can help.”

When Cat finally did get that phone call, she called Lysa. But it was late at night, and hours ticked by before Lysa called her back. The sun was starting to come up, and Arya was already trudging in the front door when the phone rang. “Sorry, Cat,” Lysa had apologized, “I didn’t get your message till just now. Do you still need me to make some calls?”

“No,” Cat had sighed, “she’s home. God knows how.”

Lysa had taken Arya to lunch that day, to scare her straight or talk her off the ledge or whatever it was she thought she was going to do. As to the substance of their conversation, Lysa had been cagey and Arya taciturn, both of which were par for the course.

But now, some six months later, Arya seemed to have stabilized a little. She still wasn’t around much, but when she was, she seemed a little more thoughtful, more even-tempered. She was still Arya, of course; impulsive, prickly, passionate… but she seemed a bit more grounded somehow. Maybe it was falling in love, or coming out, or maybe Meera’s influence, or maybe just some long overdue growing up.  Catelyn liked Meera and Dany both, though she didn't quite know what to say to them sometimes.  She felt a funny resonance with Dany though; she sensed that underneath her sweetness, that there was fire and steel.  She understood that.

Catelyn also noticed a little uptick of interest in current events and social justice on Arya’s part. Arya had had an obvious discomfort with the level of privilege afforded her in life from a fairly young age, so it was nice to see that discomfort start to develop into more concrete thoughts and opinions.

It was a slim thread to cling to, but when it came to Arya, there was almost nowhere to go but up. In truth, Catelyn had felt that she lost all of her children after Ned’s death, in one way or another. Robb had been the first.

Even though they hired an experienced hand as the nominal CEO of StarkMedia, it was pretty well-known that Robb was calling the shots over there. And while he’d inherited (or had drummed into him) Ned’s fierce journalistic ethics, he was also young and arrogant, and too invested in his 37th floor office with the big windows, and being addressed as “Mr. Stark” by board members. He was less likely than Ned had been to send legal to the mat for his editors, and he seemed to have forgotten along the way just how savvy his mother was _(“Don’t settle on these Lyonsbank stories, Robb. Make them take you to court.”_ ). He would politely half-listen to her advice, and then do what he wanted anyway. His calls and texts trickled to maybe one a week, if that.

That one hadn’t hurt as much as losing Sansa, though. Sansa had been the child she’d always understood the best. Sansa had been a writer at Intersect, StarkMedia’s women’s magazine that smartly bundled feminst politics with fashion and entertainment. She was on track to helm that one, and with her father’s idealistic streak, thorough thought processes and calm temperament, it was expected that she was going to end up over at corporate at some point too. But after Ned’s death, she quit abruptly. Robb and Catelyn had both pleaded with her to just call it a leave of absence, but she wouldn’t hear of it. And then just as abruptly, she turned up at the Stark brownstone in her NYPD cadet’s uniform. Catelyn had tried to be supportive, but she couldn’t get around the fact that her pretty, cultured daughter was now walking around with a gun and a nighstick. _It’s so dangerous,_ she’d plead every time they spoke. _You help people as a writer too._

But Sansa felt it was frivolous to use her talents that way when she could be using them to help catch criminals like the one that killed her father. And eventually, she got tired of her mother pleading with her, and she stopped calling and coming by so much.

Bran and the drugs were difficult in an entirely different way. Where Robb and Sansa had drifted away, Bran fell down a hole. His spiral was neither unusual nor surprising under the circumstances, but it was still an ordeal to drag him out of it. And it stole something from both of them that was hard to define, and had been elusive to reclaim.

So Catelyn decided, as she sat here considering the small improvements she’d seen in Arya lately, that it was time. It was time to begin to knit this family back together. Arya was growing up, and falling in love. Bran had legs, and a girlfriend. Sansa was excelling at her work, no matter how Cat may have wished she’d go back to journalism. And Robb… well, he was still Robb, but she held out hope that time and maturity would fix what was awry with him. There was going to be a dinner at the Stark brownstone, she decided, with the Stark children and their significant others (how dearly she wished Sansa would finally find someone). Attendance was mandatory, no excuses would be accepted.

As if the gods had heard her, at this moment, the phone rang. It was Sansa.


	22. No Consolation in Philosophy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meera gets into some trouble.

Meera had her feet up on a chair, reading an old issue of Fast Forward that had been lying around the club for a few weeks. She’d left her copy of Boethius’s “Consolation of Philosophy” on a shelf at work, and by the time she’d realized that she didn’t feel its familiar weight laying against her ribs through the inside pocket of her jacket, she was halfway here, and didn’t feel like going all the way back. She’d been so damn distracted this week.

Jorelle and Lyanna were over in a corner, chucking knives at a makeshift target that they’d put together with an old tire and some white paint that they’d found god knows where. Obara was with them, and in between throws, trying to bargain with them to let her turn off the Spin Doctors that was blaring on the radio in favor of some dance music or something. They weren’t feeling very accommodating but there did seem to be some sort of negotiation going on.

Meera wasn’t feeling very well. Her cheeks were feeling warm, and her stomach was suddenly threatening rebellion. She was trying to ignore it and focus on the article in front of her, something about stem cell research. It wasn’t going well. The music was feeling too loud and washing through her brain.

Asha and Ygritte were cleaning up after checking the chain drive on Ygritte’s bike. They stood at the shop sink in the back corner, washing the grease from their hands with hot water and GoJo, a heavy-duty cream soap that made a thick, grey-black lather that seemed to slither down the drain of its own volition. They finished rinsing at the same moment, and Ygritte yanked what turned out to be the last wad of paper towel out of the dispenser.

“Give us half, star,” Asha demanded, nudging Ygritte’s shoulder with her own.

“Go get a new fuckin’ pack,” Ygritte answered playfully. “There’s naught here but for one person.”

Asha gave her an irritated look. “Come on, girl, how’m I to open a new pack with these hands like this?” She held them up, dripping and still partially soapy.

“Not my fault you’re too slow.” Ygritte taunted. She continued drying her hands.

Asha slapped a wet, soapy hand onto Ygritte’s shoulder. “Maybe I dry them on you.”

It left a wet, gray, soapy print on her white tee-shirt. Ygritte’s hands fisted up and went to her hips. She glared at Asha.

“Ya feckin scunner! I’m in me rights to lay yer arse out for puttin’ them drookit hands on me gear!” Ygritte now had that angry/laughing look she sometimes got; she was mad enough that she was seriously contemplating beating your ass, but was thoroughly entertained by the thought of it.

“Jah, just go get the new pack, girl!” Asha groaned, growing frustrated. “Ya bogartin’ my patience!”

They were shouting at each other within moments. Ygritte was always nearly unintelligible, even more so when she was angry, which was often. Asha’s accent never seemed very heavy, but now, as she grew more riled up, the patois became so thick and so furious that the rest of the girls in the club simply stood there and watched. Meera forgot for half a moment that she was feeling poorly, and looked on in amusement. She’d never seen Asha get riled up by anything before, not even the night they got pinched by the cops. Even then, she’d stayed cool, made sure that Dany and Arya were as comfortable as they could be, talked the guard into giving Meera her book. Asha was always cool. But Ygritte knew how to push her buttons, apparently, and it was hard not to find the whole thing funny.

She thought about trying to intervene, but she realized with an internal chuckle that this would be difficult; though it seemed like it had become about something more than the paper towels and Ygritte’s clothes, she didn’t really understand what the hell was being said at this point. Funnier still was that she wasn’t entirely convinced that Asha or Ygritte did either.

After a few minutes of this, though, the mutiny brewing in her gut became more than an empty threat. She jumped up, ran past them to the bathroom in the back and slammed the door behind her. The sound shook the warehouse and stopped Asha and Ygritte’s shouting match cold as she doubled over the bowl, heaving.

She heard Ygritte, muffled through the door, say, presumably to Asha, “You waitin’ for an invite in the post? Go on and see to her.”

She heard Asha’s footsteps draw nearer to the door. “Meera?” Meera couldn’t quite answer because another wave of vomiting came roaring through, pushing her to her knees this time. When the heaving stopped, she heard Asha’s soft knocking on the door, and then her voice, quietly: “Meera? You alright in there, dawta?”

Meera didn’t answer.

She knocked again softly, and then pushed the door partway open.

Meera looked up from the cement floor in front of the toilet, hanging onto the side of it, cheeks ruddy, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “I’m OK, thanks. It just kind of came out of nowhere. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

Asha shook her head. She slipped inside and shut the door behind her. “You ain’t been drinking, girl,” she said softly. “And you and me had the same thing for lunch.”

Meera felt trapped. She had a moment of panic. Was Asha going to think she was stupid for getting herself into this?

Asha sat down on the floor next to her, and put a hand on her back.

Meera was done throwing up, but now she was feeling dangerously fragile. She didn’t want to cry in front of Asha.

“You take a test yet?”

Meera nodded silently.

“And?” She eyed Meera’s belly.

A pause, and then she nodded again. “Took it last night. I can’t be very far in, maybe just a few weeks.”

“You tell your boy yet?”

“No.”

“You gonna keep it?”

“I don’t know.” Meera started to cry. Asha shifted closer so that Meera could rest her head on her shoulder.

“Whatever you do, “ Asha assured her after a moment, “it’s gonna be the right thing. You’re a smart girl. Smarter than me, maybe. Smarter than Dany, and probably smarter than them crazy white girls too.”

Meera giggled through her tears to hear Asha refer to Arya, Empress and the others that way. She rested her head on Asha’s shoulder and let herself be overwhelmed, and afraid, and all of the things she didn’t want to be.

Asha put an arm around her. “Listen, girl. I been through it too, what you’re going through now.”

Meera sniffled and looked up at her through red-rimmed eyes, surprised.

Asha put her other arm around Meera, and squeezed. “I know you got to be scared now,” and her voice was as softly and fierce as Meera had ever heard it, “but let me tell you something. Me and dem, we’re your friends. We’re your family. You don’t got to do nothing alone.”

"Empress is gonna kick me out," Meera half-sobbed, half-sighed.

"Ah, fuck her if she thinks so," Asha said.  "Besides, girl, you know she probably knew before you did.  She's spooky like that."

Meera sighed, her voice warbling all over the place. “I have to tell Bran.”

“Don’t worry," Asha promised, jostling her a little. " Whatever you decide to do, you know we got your back.  And if your boy don’t do the right thing, we’ll kick his ass."

Meera wasn’t worried about that. What worried her was that she didn’t know what the right thing was. She was on a path right now, a path that didn’t involve child-rearing and godforbid, marriage. What would she do, ride around on outings with her giant belly sticking out the front of her open leather jacket? Crack people's skulls in while a baby slept, drooling, in a Bjorn against her chest, wearing a black leather onesie with zippers on it that matched hers? _OK,_ she thought as she contemplated that last image, _that’s a little bit funny._

It was hard not to feel that the universe was needling her right now. But it was impossible to know what it was saying.  Maybe there was a reason she'd forgotten "The Consolation of Philosophy" when she headed out today.  Today it didn't feel like there was any.

 

**

 

Meera had been bullied when she was younger. All through elementary school, she’d been quiet, reserved, and bookish, in a rough school in a rough neighborhood that made life hard on that type of personality. She and her brother both were targets, and in some ways JoJo got it worse than she did; he’d always been this sort of weird, frail kid that bigger, tougher kids liked to pick on. And so, where she might or might not have found it within herself to get tough for her own protection, for JoJo she could do it. One day in middle school, a group of big girls cornered them when they were walking home. The four of them were easily all a head taller than Meera, built broader, fingers armored in heavy rings laden with fake jewels, chewing their gum with too much gusto and spouting a bunch of _cholita_ trash talk. She remembered quite vividly that she was carrying a copy of “Catcher in the Rye,” and one of them grabbed it, threw it on the ground and started stomping on it while the others started pushing her and JoJo, with the idea of hemming them in against the side of this building they were walking next to.

Her chest had gone hot and thick, and she could hardly see anything through a red haze of rage that descended over her vision like a photo filter. She didn’t remember so clearly what happened next, except that when it was over, one girl was lying on the sidewalk holding her crotch, another was sitting next to her with a bloody nose, the other two were bolting off in the direction they came from, and Meera was standing there with a long hank of someone’s hair in her hand, and it was streaming in the breeze like a banner. She didn’t have too many people looking to bully her after that, but every now and then, she still had to beat someone down.

Nobody was surprised when she got a full scholarship to Barnard, but she was wholly unprepared for it. Not academically; she was every bit as smart and literate as any of these privileged white girls, and the few holes in her education that she hadn’t managed to fill on her own, she was surely capable of doing. She was wholly unprepared for the environment, though. She didn’t understand the passive-aggression of privileged white girls. She was used to aggressive aggression. She was used to being a loner, and even used to people seething with resentment towards her. But in her old neighborhood, it had been because they suspected that she thought she was better than them. At Barnard, it was because they suspected that she didn’t really deserve to be there. And once a particular group of girls figured out that they were able to goad her into starting fist fights, it became a regular event that eventually got her ejected.

She’d always imagined she’d take another stab at college. She knew she could play on that level. But how would she do that if she was raising a child?

She knew the answer. She didn’t want to know the answer. She hated the answer.

But then again, she hated the question.


	23. Thicker Than Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having succeeded in pushing the story of Roberto's bastard out of the headlines, and complicating a lot of people's lives in the process, Cersei now turns her attention to more pressing matters.

Cersei dropped some ice into a tumbler and poured some scotch over it, pursing her lips as she watched the amber liquid run over the cubes and round their corners off. She glanced at her clock and noticed it was not quite noon yet. _Jesus Christ,_ she thought, _I’m going to become a fucking drunk just like Jorah Mormont if I keep going like this._

She looked at the television in her office, which was showing New York 1 with the sound muted. They were showing footage of people rejoicing outside of one of Operation Rescue’s local offices.

Jaime sat in the chair in front of her desk. “So we’re really okay with this, are we?”

Cersei shrugged. “Can’t even begin to care.”

“What _do_ you care about?” he pressed.

She walked over to him, gazing at him lovingly, lightly stroking his hair. “My children. My brother. Our family’s future.” And then the warmth closed off as quickly as it had opened up. “Nothing else.”

She walked back to her desk and picked up the day’s copy of the Borough Record.

“You see?” She held it up triumphantly. “The news is all about this, now. Protestors outside of clinics. Brave clinic workers no longer feeling safe on their way to work. And your nephew, the champion of free speech. Nobody cares about Roberto’s little bastard in Hoboken anymore.”

Jaime looked at her with troubled eyes. “Of course our family comes first. But… these are peoples’ lives. It doesn’t bother you?”

She gave him what passed for a smile these days. “Not in the least, Jaime. I sleep like a baby.” A baby with colic, maybe, but not even Jaime needed to know how bad her nightmares were. “I have a trail of bodies at this point, my darling. It’s a bit of an occupational hazard.”

“Starting with Melara?”

She slammed her tumbler down on the desk and glared at him. “Don’t even mention her name to me.”

She and Jaime had been young. Barely eleven years old. They’d been staying at the family’s estate on Cape Cod on a late spring weekend. The start of vacation season was still a month away and the only kids to play with were townies. Predictably, Tywin wasn’t having any of that, but nevertheless, they’d snuck out one night to go play with a girl they’d met at the pizza parlor in Barnstable. Her name was Melara, and she was a pretty little redhaired girl with freckles who was clearly besotted with both of them. Most of the townies tended to be annoyed by the rich vacationers, but Melara was surprisingly outgoing, and probably a little fascinated with the beautiful blond twins and their family’s obscene wealth.

They’d crept out one cloudy evening when the normally starry expense was nearly black, and the moon sat half-obscured, haloed in the haze. They rode their bikes breathlessly down to the middle of town, where she was waiting for them. God, how children loved nothing better than a secret, even if the secret itself was nothing. They were close enough to the water that you could smell the ocean, but thick stands of rough, windswept woods adorned the ragged coast like patches of lace. She’d taken them to what looked like an old barn that seemed like it had been standing since before these trees were quite so tall. She showed them the old hitching posts with the ancient, rusty rings on them, and then the old stone well, further back into the trees. Melara and Jaime heaved its wooden cover off so that they could drop stones into it.

Cersei had been fascinated by the whole place; she had wandered away from the well, leaving Jaime and Melara dropping stones into it, following the trickling sound of a small stream that she could hear, but not see. Unable to find it, she walked back to find Melara aggressively trying to kiss Jaime, who was protesting. Cersei ran over and pushed her off of him. A scuffle ensued, which ended with Cersei pushing Melara down the well. To this day, Cersei held that she hadn’t intended to kill her. She hadn’t. They were fighting, yes, but it wasn’t supposed to end that way. They’d stood there in silent horror for several minutes. She helped Jaime lift the wooden cover back onto the well, and they ran from the woods, pale and shaking, legs wobbling so badly they could barely ride home. They slept in the same bed that night, crying on each other and taking turns waking from nightmares.

But they never told anyone. They guiltily watched the cop cars rolling around Barnstable for days, the officers asking questions. It was the first terrible secret they would share.

“Sorry,” Jaime apologized, and she knew part of him didn’t mean it. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did you manage to get the votes?”

“I called a few of my more persuasive friends.”

Like Maggie Tyrell, Cersei had her own rolodex of shady characters to whom she was careful to never owe anything, but who she’d also been able to work with from time to time. Nobody could tell you faster than a Brooklyn mobster who the dirty pols were in the city. Or the dirty cops. Petey Littlefinger had been a particularly invaluable resource in that regard. She’d been working with him since long before Tommy’s first campaign, nearly a decade at this point.

“Your friends,” Jaime repeated dryly.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “My friends are the reason that Jorah Mormont is our bitch, Jaime. Remember that. Christ, I don’t know when the hell you got such a weak stomach.”

When Jorah’s father had lost his family’s entire savings in the dot-com crash, Jorah had become desparate. He had been a captain at SIU at the time, and started taking mob payoffs out of sheer desperation to try to put his family’s fortunes back together. When Cersei had gotten wind that he was so vulnerable, she leveraged her father’s influence to make him an offer: Lyonsbank would take care of his money, and see to it that his family was made whole again, and then some. In return, he would take her calls, any time of the day or night.

“And I will always be grateful for your help –and theirs,” Jaime answered, looking to change the subject. “So, what’s the plan now? Are you going to actually let Tommy do some governing?”

She swirled the scotch inside its glass and sipped a little. “Of course. I have other things I need to deal with now.”

After a little more small talk, she gave Jaime a peck on the cheek and promised to call him later.

She picked up the phone and called Jorah.

“Why is Detective Stark at Midtown South?” she asked bluntly.

Jorah hesitated. “Madam Deputy Mayor, I have approximately thirty-four-thousand cops under me. Do you think I sign all of their transfer forms myself?”

“Thirty-four-thousand cops, but only one of them is named Sansa Stark. You’d think it might be wise to keep a closer eye on that one. The only reason I know about it is that I happened to bump into her at a fundraiser and she mentioned it!”

Jorah paused again. He had the sound of a man who had been getting awfully accustomed to women shouting at him on the phone lately. “Well, I don’t know who requested the move. I’ll look into it. I don’t think we want to abruptly move her back to Queens,” he hedged. “It might raise a flag.”

“I need to know why she’s there and what she’s working on,” Cersei said coldly. “Put eyes on her, Jorah.”

Jorah sighed. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Put eyes on her, Jorah,” she repeated, “or I will.”


	24. Bonds Remade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family "reunion" dinner at the Stark house, a smorgasbord of feelings.

It was going to be a proper family gathering.  Catelyn had even invited her sister Lysa, who had declined.  But -- it would be the first time in a few years that all the Stark children had been around the dining room table at 64 Beekman Place at the same time. Even at Christmases, the last few had been missing one or another of them: either Robb had been traveling, or Bran had been in rehab, or Sansa had been incommunicado. Catelyn normally would cook on an occasion like this, but nerves led her to simply have it catered. Not just for fear of burning the rack of lamb (this was a possibility, since it had been too long since she’d done a big meal), but she also hadn’t the first clue whether Dany’s religion had requirements about the condition of the kitchen as part of food preparation, in the same the way that kosher did. So, she found a Halal caterer and let herself sweat all the other little details.  

Robb and Jin swept in the door first, their attractive, cross-cultural cosmopolitan selves in dueling his-and-hers Manolo Blahniks and black Dulwich raincoats. Robb carried a bunch of orchids in a simple, elegant ceramic vase Jin had brought back from her last trip to Hong Kong. Jin carried a box of cupcakes from Magnolia bakery, pre-emptively apologizing in case Catelyn had some other dessert prepared.

Bran and Meera arrived next, sporting their biking gear. The last time Robb had seen his brother had been months ago; before Meera, before the bike, and before these stunning engineering masterpieces of prosthetic legs that he was walking around on. They wrapped each other in a bear hug that lasted a long time. Robb looked near tears to see how far Bran had come. Meera and Jin shook hands and made cautious, toothless little japes about their sensitive men busy having feelings all over each other.

Robb brushed a hand across one of his welling-up eyes. “Guess I can’t call you cripple anymore,” he joked.

Bran punched his shoulder. “Yeah, but I can still call you asshole.”

 

Outside, Sansa and Bree had gotten out of a yellow cab and were standing at the bottom of the stoop. Bree’s nerves were getting the better of her and she caught Sansa’s hand on her way up the stairs. “San, are you sure about this?”

Sansa stopped and turned around to look at Bree. Even standing one step up from her, she wasn’t quite eye level. She took both Bree’s hands in hers and gave her the most gentle smile. “It’s fine. My family isn’t going to be weird, I promise.”

“But what are we going to tell them, exactly?” Bree fretted.

Sansa shook her head. “Look, we’ll just tell them we’re together. That’s good enough. That’s all they need to know.”

Bree wasn’t entirely satisfied. “I just want them to …”

Sansa took Bree’s face in both her hands. (How was she handsome and beautiful both at the same time? How did she do that?) “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

They shared a long, affectionate look, and in that moment, didn’t notice Arya and Dany stroll up from their parking spots down the block.

“Oh my god!” Arya hollered.

Sansa and Brienne jumped apart. “Jesus Christ, Arya!”

Arya looked from one to the other. She’d met Bree a couple of times before and recognized her. A look of surprise and amusement broke across her face. “Wait… wait, are you guys doing it?”

Sansa and Bree looked at each other for a moment and then broke out laughing. Sansa shook her head. “Well, no, we’re definitely not doing it,” but her hand slipped around Bree’s, almost unconsciously.

Arya had seen the way they were standing a moment ago, though, and didn’t believe her. “Seriously? Because you guys are totally acting like you’re a thing.”

“Well… we _are_ a thing,” Sansa snickered.

Arya shook her head in confusion, helmet under her arm, looking back and forth. “I don’t get it.”

Sansa had the fleeting thought that she should be as nervous as Bree was, but she wasn’t. “There’s nothing to get. We’re a thing. It’s a good thing. It’s a serious thing… I think?” She glanced at Bree for confirmation, and Bree nodded. “But we just… aren’t doing it.”

Arya gave a slow, thoughtful nod. “OK… so, you guys are just being … romantically celibate together or something?”

Sansa looked over at Bree, still laughing a little. “I don’t know, baby, does that sound about right to you?”

Bree thought about it for a second. “Close enough for now, I guess.”

Then Arya paused again. “So, uh… girls for you too, then, huh?” She started chuckling. “Mom’s going to regret breast-feeding us.”

“But I’m not interested in breasts!” Sansa laughed. She hopped down the steps and landed on the sidewalk, light on her feet. “Come here, dummy.” She hugged Arya, and for a minute, they were just sisters again, eating warm cookies and watching Audrey Hepburn movies, and she forgot about everything else that was in her head.

Over Arya’s shoulder, Sansa saw Arya’s girlfriend remove her own helmet. Sansa was instantly struck by two things: she was very pretty, and she was wearing a hijab. Her mother hadn't mentioned it. She maintained her poise, disengaged herself from Arya, and held out a hand to her. “You must be Dany. I’m Sansa.”

 

Catelyn had set out some cheese plates and crudités, and started pouring off glasses of wine and distributing them. She took quick note of the way Bree helped Sansa out of her jacket, brushed cracker crumbs off her sweater, and the warm looks that Sansa gave her when she did so. Catelyn was so relieved to see that lightness in Sansa’s presence that one gets from falling in love, she couldn’t begin to care whether it was with a man, a woman, or a particularly attractive potted plant.

She smiled as she strolled back to the kitchen, hearing Arya’s loud voice above the rest, full of ball-busting mischief: “San’s the odd man out. How come you’re the only one to bring home a white girl, San?”

“She’s not white, she’s Jewish,” Bran argued, clearly trying to tweak his sister.

“Oh my god, Bran, you’re such an idiot.”

 

Meera still hadn’t told Bran she was pregnant. It never seemed like the right time. Now she was feeling panicky and dumb, in a room full of his family, dragging around a huge secret like a boulder. Meeting his brother and his other sister for the first time. And, because she hadn’t entirely decided what she was going to do about it, she was avoiding alcohol. Just in case. She was trying to be surreptitious about it, but wasn’t sure how well that was going.

As they all stood around in the impeccably-decorated living room, drinking, joking, and munching on appetizers, she noticed that Jin had also been holding the same glass of wine for quite some time now; swirling it, gesturing with it, occasionally appearing to sip from it as she chatted away about how much Hong Kong had changed since the last time she was there, about the Wanghai Chen ceramics exhibit where she’d picked up the vase they’d brought … but in forty-five minutes, Meera realized she hadn’t seen her refill it once.

 _Fuck it,_ she decided. She set her glass down on an end table and said as casually as she could, “Hey Jin, can you come to the restroom with me for a second?”

Jin glanced at the full glass Meera had just set down, and back at her. “Yeah, sure.”  She kissed Robb's cheek and said lightly, "Girls go to the bathroom in packs, you know."

They went into the upstairs bathroom and Meera shut the door. “Why aren’t you drinking?”

Jin looked at her carefully. “Why aren’t you?”

Meera sighed. “Come on, same reason, right? You’re pregnant? You guys are gonna tell everyone tonight?”

“I take it you have similar news?”

“Well…” Meera shook her head. “Yeah, I’m pregnant, but… I haven’t told Bran yet, and I don’t even know if I’m going to keep it, and-“

“Woah, woah, hold on,” Jin interrupted. “You’re not worrying about us stepping on each others’ news? You’re just freaking out and needed to talk to someone?”

“Pretty much.” Meera leaned back against the sink. “How did you know you were ready?”

Jin gave her a sympathetic look. “Well, I don’t know what you’ve got in mind for yourself and your life. For us, it was just … I don’t want to wait till I’m 40, but I wanted to get myself professionally established first, and I’ve done that. I’m 34. It felt like this was a good time.”

Meera sighed. “There’s so much I have to sort out. And I don’t think Bran’s ready to be a parent either. And I don’t want Catelyn to think I got pregnant to trap her son into a marriage, because you know the stereotype about Latinas and shit-“

“Don’t worry about Catelyn,” Jin cut in, quick but gentle. “I know you look at this family and you see all the privilege, but… Catelyn doesn't look at people that way.  She really sees _them_.  Robb and I have been married for almost ten years and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her call someone wrong, honestly.” Jin patted her hand. “Look, you should do what you think is the right thing for you, but … don’t let your worries about her make the decision for you. She’ll be on your side. Besides, she’s dying for grandchildren.”

Meera nodded uneasily.

“But you really need to tell Bran, and I don’t think you should wait. This is clearly driving you crazy.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because you met me forty five minutes ago and you just dragged me up to the bathroom for life advice.”

 

In the kitchen, Dany helped Catelyn heat the trays of food and pull out place settings.

Catelyn insisted she didn’t need help, but Dany was equally insistent that she felt compelled. As Dany quietly counted off forks, Catelyn asked her, “So. What do you think about the new marriage law?”

Dany lost count, surprised. “Uh, well… I think it’s a good thing,” she answered carefully. Catelyn was referring to the state legislature legalizing gay marriage recently. It was about the last question Dany was expecting.

Catleyn nodded. “Yes, it is. Ned and I actually donated frequently to those campaigns, since about the late 80’s.”

Dany looked at her awkwardly. “I… why do you ask?”

Catelyn took out a pitcher of iced tea and several trays of ice cubes from the freezer. As she bent the trays and popped the cubes out, she spoke in careful, even tones. “Dany, I don’t want you to receive this as pressure, because it’s not. But… Arya has changed a great deal in the last several months, and I can’t help feeling it has to do with you.” She dropped the ice into the pitcher, and then sat down on a stool next to her. “I just wanted you to know that you’d be welcome in this family if you… ever felt that you wanted that.”

Dany bit her lip and blinked back some warm tears pooling up behind her eyes. “Thank you, Mrs. Stark.”

“And that’s another thing. You’re not a teenager. You can call me Cat.”

 

 

Meera came down from the bathroom and dragged Bran out to the porch.  "Bran, I'm pregnant," she blurted, and then stood there anxiously.

To her surprise, he looked pleased. “That’s great…” He surveyed her nervous, anxious face. “Isn’t it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not ready. I don’t know if you’re ready either.”

He tangled both his hands into her curls and smiled at her. “Look, it’s okay. Whatever you want to do.”

She bit her lip. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. But… I’m in love with you, Meera. I… well…” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a tiny velvet box. “…I was planning on asking you this tonight anyway.”

“Oh my god, Bran,” she whispered. “You can’t be serious.”

“Meera…” He took her hand. “If you’re not ready for kids, that’s ok. But I…” He opened the box and there it was. The diamond twinkled in the streetlamp light. “I want to marry you, ok? I didn’t know about this, I just bought this because I was going to ask you tonight, so… will you?”

She leaned into his arms and started to cry. “Bran, I want to. I want to say yes, but… let’s deal with the other thing first.”

He held her tightly. “OK. However you want to do it.”

Her voice was tight in her throat. “And there’s all these assholes outside the clinics now since the law changed. I never thought I’d have to deal with that in my life…”

“You won’t be alone,” he promised.

 

Jin and Robb’s announcement was met with hugging and happy tears and shoulder punches and desserts, and more wine for everyone except Jin. As soon as Meera had said it out loud to Bran, she knew what the right decision was. She let herself have a couple glasses of wine, and she and Jin smiled at each other across the table.

Robb and Jin left. Shortly after, Meera tried to go home too, but Catelyn didn’t want her getting on her bike after drinking, not when it was late at night and had been drizzling all evening, so she insisted Meera stay the night, and loaned her some silk pajamas that were a little too long but fit well enough. She trudged off to sleep in Bran’s room, with Bran following shortly thereafter.

Arya flipped on the local news. Dany slipped off to the kitchen to help Catelyn clean up. Sansa and Bree sat together on the couch watching while Arya sat across from them, cleaning and polishing her boots. Bree was dozing within minutes, as she generally did in front of the news. The anchors talked about the protestors outside the clinics.

“Such bullshit,” Arya grumbled under her breath. Sansa noticed, but didn’t comment.

Then they flipped to a story about a verdict in favor of a fraternity at Queens College; they had been accused of raping three girls, but had walked due to contaminated evidence and questions about the victims’ credibility because two of them had histories of mental illness for which they were medicated.

Arya shook her head, fuming. “ _Such_ bullshit.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Sansa said carefully. “They were acquitted.”

Arya’s face darkened. “The justice system doesn’t always work, San.”

“I didn’t say it did. I just said if they’re acquitted, there’s nothing you can do.”

Arya became restless in her seat. “But… San… I mean, don’t you wish there was a… look, what if those guys you busted in Queens, the traffickers, like… what if after all that work you put it, what if they walked? Because someone screwed up, or because someone bought off a judge? Wouldn’t you…”

Sansa looked at her sister curiously. “Wouldn’t I what?”

Arya huffed. “Wouldn’t you want them to get justice some other way?”

Sansa thought of the faces of those young kids that they pulled out of the house in Queens. She still felt sick to her stomach, even now. It was hard to answer. “I… Arya, I don’t know. I mean, you know… emotionally, yes. If someone beat them to bloody pulps I probably wouldn’t shed a tear about it. But … sometimes the right thing and the just thing aren’t always the same thing.”

Arya looked uncomfortable and angry.

Sansa looked at her, point blank. “Arya, I know you got picked up in Brooklyn.”

Something in Arya’s face immediately closed off. “Yeah, but it was a mistake. They let us out.”

“Who got you out?”

Arya put down her boot, and drew her legs up underneath her. “You know, I really don’t think I want to talk about it.”

Sansa was worried. “Arya … I’m not asking as a cop. I’m just asking as your sister. I want to know that you’re okay.”

“My sister _is_ a cop. Didn’t you get the memo?”

Sansa looked at her for a long minute before answering. “I’m just looking out for you, Arya.” She gently nudged Bree, who sat up slightly startled and seeming to have forgotten for a moment where she was. “Baby, we gotta get going,” she murmured gently to her.

She got up and briskly went into the kitchen, said goodbye to her mother and Dany, and then, as she and Bree headed out the front door, she looked Arya one last time. “Just… if you find yourself in a bad situation, or if there’s something you decide you need to tell me, I’m here for you.”

Arya shrugged. “Yeah, ok. Thanks.”

Feeling wrung out, Sansa took Bree's hand and walked out into the drizzly night.


	25. Dirty Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa makes some discoveries, and has a little phone call with Margaery Tyrell.

Sansa was at a bit of a dead end on both of her investigations.

She had nothing much on Mormont. He was ex-military. His aunt was Brooklyn Borough Commander. He was SIU for a while, became Inspector at Midtown South and was particularly known for shuttering all the escort services and cathouses in the precinct. His father lost a bunch of money in the dotcom bust. He was Manhattan Borough Commander for a year while still running Midtown South due to some weird departmental thing. Then the Mayor tapped him for the job he has now. He had an impeccable record as far as anything she could see.

Weeding through the files on the Manhattan biker cases wasn’t yielding much, either. Whoever was orchestrating these things, they were exceedingly careful and knew something about how to avoid being ID’d. Never took off their helmets, taped up their plates before heading into camera range, rode bikes of exceedingly common make and model with no detailing whatsoever.

Of course, there was that very distinctive vintage Indian she saw in the picture of that one Brooklyn case, but there wasn’t any real thread connecting it to the other cases other than a similar time frame. She had Shae get hold of better images. It looked exactly like her father’s. “Yes, Arya’s been riding your dad’s old Indian,” her mother had confirmed when she called. When Sansa asked if she’d been in any trouble with the cops lately, Catelyn had sounded surprised. “Yes, she was picked up in Brooklyn. You mean you weren’t the one that bailed her out?” But then she’d quickly changed the subject and roped her into coming to dinner.

Not even sure what she was investigating anymore, Sansa called the precinct and asked to speak to the officer that had filed the report. A young cop named Waters got on the phone, dripping attitude. “Yeah?”

“I’m just wondering, the report says that there were four arrests, but I don’t see any names, mug shots, nothing like that,” she pressed. “Just wondering what that’s about?”

Waters spent a moment eating something crunchy and loud into the phone before he answered, “Yeah. It was apparently a mistake.”

“What do you mean apparently?”

“We arrested four girls who were getting on their bikes who were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“But shouldn’t that make them witnesses?” she pressed.

Waters spent another moment chewing loudly. “Look, what difference does it make? The shop owner wasn’t looking to press charges anyway.”

Sansa frowned. Curiouser and curiouser. “So … I’m sorry, Officer Waters, help me out, here. You guys picked up four girls on bikes at the scene, and then decided that they were not suspects after all?”

“Yeah, that’s right. A Jamaican girl, a Puerto Rican girl, a white girl, and … this was the best – there was this Muslim girl. Like, we took the helmet off and she had the thing on her head.” He chuckled.

“Thing?”

“Yeah, y’know. The scarf thing the Muslim chicks wear. She had it on under her helmet. Never saw nothing like that before! Anyways, some lady came and picked them up, and the chief said don’t bother booking them.”

“You never booked them?”

“Yeah. We were busy that night. They were in holding but we didn’t get around to booking them.” There was a pause while she heard him slurping something through a straw.   “Anyway, why’s this so interesting to Midtown South?”

Sansa sighed. “It probably isn’t. I’m just grasping at straws. Thanks, Waters.”

A Jamaican girl, a white girl, a Puerto Rican girl, and a Muslim girl in a hijab on a bike. Sansa was positive that she’d been with three of the four of those girls at dinner on Saturday.   She was less positive that it had anything to do with her other investigations. But her gut was nagging her.

She sighed, and then reached into her pocket and fished out that little scrap that Maggie Tyrell had slipped into her purse at the benefit, with the cell number on it.

She slipped off to the ladies room and, after checking that all the stalls were empty, she dialed.

It rang a couple of times while she kept nervously looking at the door, and then the very recognizable voice answered. “I trust you know how to be discreet,” was how she answered the phone.

Sansa paused. “Yes. Listen, I just want to know something. Why did you want me moved here?”

“I think you know why. I would have assumed you’d be working on it by now.”

“I am. But… look, I just want to know why this is important to you. It’s not just about justice for me, is it.”

“What makes you say that?”

Sansa paused. “Because I don’t really buy that you’re that altruistic,” she decided after a moment.

Maggie Tyrell paused, and Sansa could picture her fixing her with that brilliant smile, the one that said she was seven chess moves ahead. “I think that if you find the answer you’re looking for, it will open the door to something much bigger. A lot of people have suffered, and I’m hoping this leads to justice for them too.”

Sansa didn’t understand. “Look, I’m just… I’m at a dead end. I think this goes very high up, but I … it would help if I knew what I was looking for.”

A pause, that hung on just a beat too long. “Start with your brother.”

“What?”

“Ask him why he had his editors back off on the Lyonsbank stories.”

“Okay.” Silence.

“You know, when this is all over, I really would like to take you for dinner. I have a table at Le Cirque.”

“Thanks, but I’m spoken for.”

“Ah, well. A girl can’t be blamed for trying. Best of luck in your searches.”

Sansa hung up, all thumbs fumbling to get the call to disconnect. The door swung open and she nearly jumped out of her shoes.

Shae walked in. “Hey, Stark. You look like you saw a ghost or something. You ok?”

Sansa sighed. “Yeah, Shae, sorry. It’s just… personal stuff.”

Shae looked concerned. “Anything I can help with?”

“No, don’t worry about it.”   She sighed heavily and looked at Shae. She was letting herself get carried away on this investigation and had little to show for her efforts on the biker case. She had to at least look busy. “Have we looked at a breakdown of the time frames on these biker things? Like how much time went by between when the victims walked on whatever they got charged with, and when they were attacked?”

Shae thought for a minute. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Let’s start doing that. We can break it in half if you want. I can take the most recent half and you can take the older ones.”

“Okay. What do you think that’s going to tell us?”

Sansa went to the sink and ran the cold water, splashing some on her face. “Well, I’m hoping it’ll give us some sense of a pattern as to how they choose their targets and maybe help us predict where they might hit next.”

Shae looked impressed. “Okay, sure. I’ll get started.”

 

**

 

She could tell from Robb’s tone that this was not a call he was expecting nor a conversation he wanted to have.

“You sound like Mom,” he complained.

“Robb, I’m not saying whether you should or shouldn’t have backed off on them. I’m just asking why.”

After an uncomfortable pause, he admitted, “I felt that … it wasn’t a fight we wanted.”

“We, meaning StarkMedia?”

He sighed. “We, meaning, our family, San.”

“I don’t understand.”

“San, most of our family’s trusts are held by Lyonsbank. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to drag StarkMedia through a lengthy legal battle that was likely to hurt our stock value. It was that I didn’t want to endanger our family’s future. I mean, you and I will be fine, no matter what. But Bran and Arya? I don’t know whether they’re going to be able to live adult lives without the support of the family. And that’s fine, that’s OK. It’s not a judgment. But … it felt too risky to get into a protracted fist fight with people who could hurt our family’s finances that way.”

Sansa sighed. “Dad would have done the court battle, probably.”

“Yeah, he would have. There were already rumblings that it was going to happen, even before he died.”

“How illegal would it have been for Lyonsbank to have screwed with our money?”

“It depends, San. It depends how they handle it, what they do with it. The wrong handling, and you’re losing all your family’s money in the dotcom crash. The right handling, and you’re putting it all back together and then some in the mortgage boom. Insider trading is illegal, of course, and negligence is something you can litigate, but … there are so many ways to screw things up that it’s pretty hard to prove wrongdoing. I still can’t believe Martha Stewart ever went to jail.”

Sansa thought a moment. That certainly was a motive: if her father had refused to back off of the stories, it wasn’t such a stretch to think that someone at Lyonsbank wanted him dead, and that whoever it was might have the influence to get Mormont to cover it up.

“Why are you asking me about this?”

“I can’t tell you right now. I promise I will soon.”

Robb sighed. “OK. Look … you’ll tell me if you think there’s a problem, right?”

“Of course,” she promised.

 

**

 

Sansa read the articles, at least some of them. There were a lot of questions surrounding how Lyonsbank had managed to come out of the mortgage crisis so unscathed. There had been evidence suggesting they’d held some of these junk mortgage bundles until as recently as six months prior to the crash. Some said it was simply prescience that they’d unloaded them. Some said Tywin Lannister had practically invented the practice of short-selling during his time at Goldman Sachs. Most interesting were the questions about exactly whose money they were handling (or laundering, depending on how you looked at it). The regulators that were investigating the bank were also under scrutiny in these articles. Many of them had been documented as having been lavishly entertained at Tywin Lannister’s estates on Cape Cod or in Westchester. She called the writer at Ticker who had been the most persistent in his pecking away at the financial behemoth; Wendel Manderly. “Wendel, it’s Sansa Stark.”

“Sansa Stark?” The surprise was evident in his voice. They didn’t know each other, but he knew who she was. “What…uh, what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to ask you about the Lyonsbank articles.”

He chuckled. “Aren’t you a cop now?”

“You heard right.”

“Yeah… unfortunately, as part of the deal your brother made, I’m not supposed to talk about them.”

Sansa frowned. “OK, but… maybe you can answer some questions in the abstract? For those of us not deeply entrenched in the world of finance?”

“Well, I can try.”

“So … I’m wondering something. Forget about the collective issues like bundled mortgages and short-selling, I know you can’t talk about that. Is it possible for a bank to manipulate the finances of a particular individual or trust without it coming up on the radar?”

Wendel paused. “Well, sure. I mean, the BSA only has provisions for tracking certain types of transactions over $10,000. Money laundering is spectacularly easy, and the bigger the institution, the harder it is to track it. The financial instruments like the ones that we think brought about the crash, for example…?”

“Sorry, BSA?” Sansa interrupted.

“Banking Secrecy Act. Basically, financial institutions are supposed to keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, and file reports of cash purchases of these negotiable instruments if they add up to more than ten grand per day. They’re also supposed to report suspicious activity that might signify money laundering, tax evasion, or other criminal activities.”

“Ten grand a day? That seems like a lot.”

Wendel laughed. “Yeah, doesn’t it?”

“So, am I understanding you correctly? If someone was laundering money or arranging payoffs to someone, as long as they were keeping the amount under ten grand a day, the bank wouldn’t even necessarily have to be complicit in the whole thing?”

“Not necessarily. But it would help. Remember, they still have to keep records of the cash purchases, even the ones under ten grand. It’s just that if they’re over ten grand, they’re supposed to file reports.”

“But… if they don’t?”

Wendel cleared his throat. “Well, again. It’s hard to prove and you’d have to know what you were looking for. If you had someone on the inside at the bank willing to play fast and loose with the records. I mean, in the eighties, regulators caught some mob guys working with people inside one of the banks, but it’s rare. They’d have to be pretty sloppy.” He sounded uncomfortable. “This isn’t about the crash articles, is it, Detective?”

“Do you think it goes on now?” she pressed, ignoring his question.

“Probably. There’s still mob in the city, and there’s still banks, so …” His distress was becoming audible. “Look, I’m sorry, Detective, I… I want to help you, I really do, but I’m really not supposed to be talking to the cops.”

Sansa let him off the phone, and sat thinking for a long moment. It was starting to come into focus, what Margaery Tyrell wanted: she wanted to hold Lyonsbank, or at least some of its executives, responsible for the role she suspected that they played in the crash. Tying her father’s death back to them was the key to cracking that open – assuming that the D.A.’s intuition on the matter was correct. And having Sansa working on it, surreptitiously, was meant to keep it temporarily under the radar in order to catch them with their pants down.

It also seemed plausible that if Lyonsbank had been holding her own family’s trusts at financial gunpoint, that they might be doing the same to someone else’s.

But consistent with the way things had been going lately, it raised more questions than it answered.


	26. Chasing Shadows

Asha had been exhausted all morning at work, downing black coffee after black coffee to keep her eyes open while she opened up bike engines and picked them apart and put them back together. Ygritte had kept her up half the night arguing with her about Empress’s decision.

“Why in feck does she get the final word? Meera’s our fecking girl and we’ve got a right to stand with her.”

Asha had groaned and tried to roll over and go to sleep. “Look, it’s her show, star. Empress been callin’ the shots from day one. I’d be in jail right now probably, along with Dany, Meera, and Arya, too, if she didn’t get us outta trouble.”

Ygritte wasn’t having it, though. She yanked the sheet off of Asha. “Still a bunch of shite. She don’t have a say whether we go stand with our girl.”

Asha yanked the sheet back, but Ygritte wasn’t letting go without a fight.

“No sleep for you, bird. Not till you promise me to fecking stand up to the Empress and do what’s right. The rest of them girls aren’t gonna listen to me, but they’ll damned well listen to you.”

So, Asha had called Empress up. At one a.m. She’d argued the case: _it’s not right that the law has become what it’s become and that Meera can’t feel safe walking into a clinic. We’re her crew, and her family, and we have to be there with her._ Empress had initially been set against the idea that any of them should go with Meera and her boyfriend, excepting possibly Arya since she was Bran’s sister. Asha argued the point that in other places where people were used to the law being this tilted, there were support structures in place, they had clinic escorts and things like that.

“Understand that I completely support Meera’s decision,” Empress answered. “I had a choice taken away from me once, I know how important it is.” She thought about it for a minute, and then finally relented: “Fine. It can be a couple of you. But no big show. Not the whole group. No bikes. No doing some dumb shit that’s going to get you on the news.”

And so, Ygritte rewarded her with a typically riotous fuck, and then finally let her go to sleep.

But here, at work the next day, as she buzzed along on coffee and Clendon’s brain-melting dubstep that echoed through the shop, she felt dissatisfied with that. Why not the whole group? Why not show these craven choke puppies that they had an army to contend with? Empress had been scary right about so many things, but what were the odds that maybe this was the one time when she was just wrong? Asha decided to bet on it.

On her lunch break, she started writing a group text message.

**

 

“Look, Maggie, we can’t arrest them if what they’re doing isn’t against the law.”

Margaery was fuming on the other end of the phone. “Goddamnit, Jorah! There’s no way this should have even gotten past the Council. They’ve legalized harassing people! It’s incredible. Has Tommy said anything to you about it?”

Jorah sighed. “No, not yet, but I suspect he caved under pressure.”

“From who?!”

“Do you really need to ask who?”

“The goddamned Deputy Mayor,” she growled. It was unlike her to lose her cool, but this wasn’t about scoring points in the press. Lifting the long-standing ban on protests in front of clinics that provided abortions was just an insane thing to do, and she knew, _she knew_ it wasn’t Tommy’s work. This was one of those times when his people-pleasing tendency was a problem. Margaery had thrown a little bomb to keep Cersei busy, and she’d gotten busy indeed. She couldn’t begin to contemplate the amount of arm-twisting Cersei had had to do to get the votes. “That law was one of the first ones like it in the country, did you know that?!” she ranted. “That was in place since my grandmother’s administration!”

She couldn’t tell whether this move was aimed specifically at her, or whether it was just part of a larger distraction intended to take the focus off the story about Roberto’s bastard kid, but either way, it was no damned good.

Jorah sounded especially tired. “Look, Maggie. You know how this works. Have your people look at the damn law. Find something we can use. Noise ordinances, whatever. I’ll work with you. I don’t like it either, believe me. But I can’t keep enforcing a law that’s not a law anymore.”

Margaery, who had been stomping back and forth behind her desk, slowed, then sat on the edge of the desk, still fighting mad, but already thinking strategy.

“Alright,” she said after a moment. “We’ll get some eyes on the thing and see what we can find. I appreciate your willingness to work with me. I’ll let you know what I come up with.” She hung up.

Strictly speaking, this shouldn’t even be her office’s domain and they both knew it. She was supposed to be about nailing people breaking the law, not finding ways to nail people who were doing something legal that she happened to dislike. She figured she would quietly put a couple of her sharp young assistant D.A.’s on the task of looking for weak spots in the law, making very clear that they were not to discuss what they were working on with anyone. She didn’t want to appear overzealous or ineffective, nor give any opposition a chance to mount a pre-emptive defense.

She flicked on the television in her office to the local news channel, and saw some coverage of a protest outside of a clinic downtown, a small crowd knotted around the front entrance with their ghastly dead-fetus-in-a-jar signs, hollering god knew what at the women trying to get to the front door. Even with the sound off, she felt literally, physically sick looking at it.

But then, something interesting happened.

A group of motorcycles pulled up in front of the clinic. There were enough that she couldn’t tell how many there were because some of them were out of frame. At a glance, what looked to be roughly eight bikers in leather riding gear, with their helmets still on, streamed into the frame. The crowd began a restless pitching and stirring, their command of the small stub of sidewalk space suddenly challenged. The bikers never removed their helmets, but pushed their way into the bunch of people and cleared a small pathway for a young woman and a young man (probably her boyfriend) to walk into the building.

Margaery picked up the remote and turned on the sound. The anchor’s voice was intoning: “—and while this amounted to little more than a traffic violation in terms of any issues for these mystery bikers, the police did not arrive in time to issue any parking tickets. This is the first response that the people of New York have seen to the new phenomenon of protestors outside of clinics.”

She smiled.

 

**

 

Sansa was parked up at Bree’s place, feet up, watching the same footage.

The bikers never took off their helmets, but there was Arya’s Indian, just within the frame.

She shook her head. This was not good.

Bree came over and rumpled her hair. “What’s the matter?”

“I think that’s my sister on the news.”

Bree looked at the television for a moment, taking everything in. “Where?”

“One of the bikers. Because look- that’s Bran, right? And that’s his girlfriend that we met, right? And there’s my sister’s bike. That’s her bike. Our dad’s old bike.”

Bree looked for a moment more. “So? She’s stepping up and protecting women’s rights. Isn’t that good?”

Sansa sighed. “Yes, but…” She was struggling to explain. “Look, she’s with a group of bikers. They’re deliberately being intimidating…”

“So what? That’s the point, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s not what clinic escorts usually do. They’re just there to protect the woman, not to intimidate the protestors.” She’d written her share on that issue during her time at Intersect, and the move was clearly admirable in its intent but not done by people who had ever done something like it before.

She picked up the remote and backed up the feed, showing the footage again.

“And look… Look how they’re in sync with each other… they’re obviously used to doing… _something_ … together, and it clearly isn’t volunteering as clinic escorts.”

Bree seemed dubious, but Sansa’s instincts were also pretty good.

“So?”

Sansa shook her head. “So, nothing. Nothing yet, anyway. I’m probably just chasing shadows.”

 


	27. Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stakes of both of Sansa's investigations are getting higher.

When Sansa got into work the next day, Snow was lingering near her desk. “Hey Stark,” he called out as she trudged in, sounding like he wanted an actual conversation.

“Hi Snow,” she replied, hoping to head it off at the pass by grabbing the folders Shae had left from the night before, flipping them open, and acting urgently interested in them. To say she’d slept poorly would be a gross understatement.

“So, uh… did you see the news last night?”

Sansa tensed, but didn’t pause for more than a split second. “No, why?”

“There was a clinic protest, you know… the new law, how the assholes with the signs are allowed to hang around outside the Planned Parenthood and stuff now?”

Sansa nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

“Well, some bikers broke up a protest yesterday.” He looked at her expectantly. “What do you think?”

Sansa shrugged. “You mean, do I think they’re our bikers?” Her stomach felt like it was devouring itself but she struggled to keep cool. She knew where he was headed and didn’t like it.

“Yeah. I mean, you seem like you’re following this angle, you know? The whole ‘women’s rights’ angle or whatever? Maybe they got tired of assaulting wife beaters and rapists, and they’re moving on to uh… bigger and better things?”

Sansa bristled. “Well… I don’t know, Snow. I mean, they’re pretty rough on rapists and abusers in the joint. It’s not such a stretch to think a bunch of guys with that type of attitude decided to go on a white knight crusade or something. You know, maybe their wives or daughters got attacked or something… But defending abortion clinics? I don’t know. That doesn’t really seem like a Hell’s Angels kind of thing to me.” She paused. “Besides, whoever we’re looking for on these assaults, they’ve been super careful. They don’t get ID’d, not ever. To go and do something so big and visible like that… it doesn’t fit with their M.O.”

Snow shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. It’s not like we’re swimming in leads, here. I think it’s worth a look.”

She looked at him evenly. “Is that an order?”

He sighed. “Come on, don’t make me do that, Stark.”

She shrugged. “OK. Shae and I are sorting some other data, but… I’ll check it out. I’ll have her pull the news footage and see if I can get a better look, talk to some witnesses.”

Snow nodded approvingly and walked away.

“Why’s he being so pushy about that?” Shae asked, after he’d gotten out of earshot.

Sansa shrugged. “I don’t know. This whole assignment has been weird from jump. Nobody wanted me here.”

Shae shook her head sympathetically. “Anyway, you think he’s right about looking at that clinic thing?”

Sansa gave a noncommittal wave of her hand. “Can’t hurt, I guess.”

 

 

 **

 

 

Cersei and Jaime sat on the terrace in Cersei’s palatial Gramercy Park condo, drinking wine in the unseasonably warm breeze. It was too damned early in the day for wine, but he wasn’t about to start that conversation again.

“So,” she asked him after a long silence, “what are you doing with your pet Stark this week? Taking him to the zoo to see the penguins? Hang-gliding for the disabled?”

Jaime gave her a pained look. “Do you need to be that way about it?”

Cersei leveled her gaze at him. “Yes. I do. Haven’t we discussed at length already what a terrible fucking idea it is for you to be friends with him?”

He sighed. “Yes. Yes, we have. But… look, his life was shattered, and…”

“And that’s not your problem. You don’t owe him anything.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and, wincing as he braced for her wrath, he replied, “But, I kind of do, though. I’m just doing the right thing.”

Her voice took on the kind of cold that it did when she was about to do something so awful that he didn’t want to know about it. “Jaime, there is no ‘right thing’. You protect your own, like I’ve always protected you. Like Dad has always protected all of us, even our lousy brother. That’s the only right thing that there is.”

Jaime started to object to her trashing Tyrion, but she cut him off.

“The right thing, Jaime, begins and ends with us. You seem to be losing your grip on that very important fact.”

Her cell phone rang. She picked it up, raised an eyebrow, and answered. “Yes.”

Jaime watched, unable to hear what was being said on the other end.

Cersei stood listening for a moment. “She has? …Alright… Well, has she found anything? Well, for fuck’s sake, find out! No no, nothing yet. Just keep me apprised. Thank you.” She hung up.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Sansa Stark had better hope that Jorah feels inspired to listen to me and fucking move her out of Midtown South immediately.”

Jaime’s stomach twisted hard. He knew that tone. That was the tone of a campaign manager who had gotten a dead hooker out of a congressman’s hotel room in the middle of the night. That was the tone of a woman who had peoples’ fingers broken. Who had probably done a hundred and one other things he absolutely did not want to know a word about, as much for the sake of not wanting to contemplate the damage to what was left of her soul, as for the simple fact of plausible deniability.

“Cersei…”

“Jaime, I don’t know how close she is to the truth but we can’t afford that. If Jorah doesn’t take care of this situation, I will.”

He set his wine down and gripped her shoulders. The warm breezes blew softly through her pale locks and the city breathed soft traffic sounds from several flights below. “Cersei… don’t. I … I don’t like that you’re even thinking about it. Jorah knows what’s at stake, I’m sure he’ll take care of it.”

The angry blush came to her cheeks as she glared into his eyes. “I don’t want to rely on that fucking drunk. I want a backup plan.”

He gripped her tighter, eyes pleading. He was exhausted with all of it. He missed her sweetness; why was it that now, even her love came wrapped in claws and razor sharp teeth? “Not a backup plan that involves Petey Littlefinger. Please.”

Cersei’s face was … unreadable. “Jaime, I’m going to do what I have to do to protect you, and us, and our family. You can’t go fucking weak-kneed on me, not when we’re in so deep.” She hooked her arms around his waist. “I’d do anything for you, Jaime. And I already have. Don’t go running for the hills and ruin this entire thing.”

He closed his eyes, still hanging onto her shoulders, wanting to believe that she was still in control, but he knew his doubt was palpable to her.

Suddenly, she was pressing herself against him, shoving him back inside and away from the terrace. She started laying desperate kisses all over his face. “Jaime, Jaime, you have to be strong. You have to let me take care of it, ok?”

But he didn’t feel strong. He felt his heart racing and his sister’s lips all over his face and his cock stiffening, and he wanted to push her away, but he couldn’t. He found himself holding her face, gripping her chin with one hand, his hungry tongue delving into her mouth. This had happened before, when they were much younger; he’d shoved that memory away into the darkest part of his mind and forced himself to never think about it. They’d gotten into their own adult entanglements and marriages after that, and he was able to let himself forget it. But here it was again, laying itself open and demanding acknowledgement.

He was agonizingly present through it all as she shoved him against the living room wall, tugged his pants down and started stroking his cock. After a few moments of this, he tore her off of him, turned her around, flung her skirt up, and fucked her over the back of the black leather sofa, trying not to look at her, trying not to see her face, trying to pretend it was anyone else, but he couldn’t. “Jaime, Jaime,” she kept whispering in between her moans and grunts, “be strong, honey. Be strong.”

He pounded away, sick and heartbroken and wanting to stop, but he couldn’t, because it was the only part of her that was still soft. Later, he didn’t even remember what he said to her before he left; by the time he had gotten his pants up and she’d pulled her skirt back down, they were acting as if nothing had happened. He knew what she’d just done to him. He knew. But it changed nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know many of you were worried that I wasn't going to do the twincest, because Robert's kids are actually Robert's in this AU.


	28. Good News and Bad News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa continues to get closer on both of her cases. Myrcella Baratheon makes an appearance. A friend turns out to be untrustworthy.

Sansa had finally been moved to a proper desk and was surreptitiously leafing through an article of Wendell Manderly’s which she had slid inside of a folder full of spreadsheets that she’d been working on. One line jumped out about halfway down a column dealing with the very thing she’d discussed with him on the phone: the ease of money laundering. She suddenly remembered reading that Jeor Mormont, Jorah’s father, had lost the family’s entire savings in the dotcom crash, and something clicked in her mind. She wondered whether the Mormonts’ fortunes were as dire these days.

Jorah Mormont’s reputation tended to be that of a very decent man. Everyone that she’d casually asked at the precinct had said so (she wasn’t concerned that they were simply being polite, as she’d certainly gotten an earful or two when she’d asked the same people about what it was like to work under Captain Frey). There were even a number of surprisingly specific anecdotes about his kindness, his talent for empathy with those who worked under him; he was the total “tough but fair” package that everyone wanted to believe all cops were like. She’d heard just about everything except a story that ended wtih him rescuing a kitten out of a tree.

So, it didn’t add up in her mind that this type of man would order the killing of an innocent kid to cover up a murder, unless he were under some sort of incredible duress. Unless he was owned by someone or something big. Something as big as, say, a multi-billion-dollar international investment bank.

She picked up the phone and called Wendell Manderly again.

“Detective,” he half-groaned, trying to be polite but frustrated he was having to deal with this again. “I really don’t feel comfortable with you calling me.”

“It’s not about the crash articles,” she cut him off, her tones quiet and clipped. “I just need to know… how would I find out if a certain public official’s trusts are held by a particular financial institution?”

A heavy sigh came over the line. “Okay, well, that’s easy. That’s a matter of public record, they have to disclose annually. Business interests, trusts, anything like that.” He paused. “Detective, I know there are cops that work finance cases, why aren’t you talking to them? Why call me?”

Sansa smiled. It was a smart question. “You’re a good reporter, Wendell,” she answered with a quiet chuckle.

“Flying under the radar, huh?” he poked, turning suddenly jovial. He could tell she was doing something she didn’t want anyone on the force to know about. “Okay, well, you’ve got to request the disclosure forms from the COIB. I request them on all the high level officials every year as a matter of routine, so I probably have what you want; it’s just up to you whether you want to ask me for it, or request the forms yourself. And if you’re trying to fly under the radar, that means you’re probably going to want to ask for everyone’s forms so that you don’t call attention to whoever it is you’re snooping on.”

“Investigating,” she corrected.

“Well, whatever you want to call it, I probably can give you the information you’re looking for and you can trust me to keep it under my hat.” He paused. “I came up under your dad, Sansa. I’d sooner go to jail than give up a source, and I think you know that having to back off on Lyonsbank is killing me. I almost quit over it.”

Her voice shook a little. “I’m glad you didn’t.” When it came to journalistic ethics, having both come up learning Ned Stark’s staunch approach to it made Wendell Manderly a brother of sorts even though they barely knew each other, and the thought made her inexplicably emotional. She looked over both shoulders, and once she was confident that nobody was lingering and listening, she pressed: “Wendell, I can’t tell you why I want it, but I need to know whether Commissioner Mormont has any trusts with Lyonsbank and if he does, I need whatever you can give me about their status.”

He whistled. “No wonder you didn’t want to ask any other cops about this.” After a pause, he asked, “And this is not about the crash articles, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Is this the best number to reach you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. It’s gonna take me a little time to pull this stuff up for you. I’ll try to get back to you in a little bit.”

Sansa heaved a sigh of relieved gratitude. “Thanks, Wendell.”

“I really hope I don’t regret this,” he warned.

 _I hope so too,_ she wanted to say, but didn’t. She ended the call.

Shae appeared in front of her desk and plunked down a folder. “Hey Stark!” she exclaimed, seeming excited.

Sansa jumped. “What’s up?”

“Well, I think you’ve probably found the same trend I did with these assaults?” Without waiting for Sansa to answer, she plunged on. “It seems like the time frame between the acquittals and the assaults is usually about two weeks. Is that what you’ve been finding too?”

Sansa had actually not reviewed as much of the data as she was supposed to have, but she bluffed forward because she didn’t want to admit she hadn’t been doing her job because, well, she’d been secretly investigating the goddamned police commissioner because she suspected him of covering up her father’s murder. “Pretty much. A few outliers here or there.”

Shae nodded. “So, what do you think?”

Sansa rubbed her temples for a moment. Suddenly, she sat up. She realized something: “Shae, where do you live?”

“Whitestone.”

Queens. “So you know about that St. John’s case, the frat rape case?”

Shae nodded. “Yeah, they acquitted those guys…”

Sansa remembered watching the news at her mother’s place after the dinner that evening. “…two weeks ago,” she finished.

They looked at each other. Those guys might be in trouble. “We should go talk to them,” Shae declared after a moment.

Sansa shook her head. “What do you mean we, Shae? You’re a desk officer and you’re not my partner. Not that I don’t want you along, but Snow’ll get pissed if you go with me.”

Shae looked disappointed. “OK, you’re right, but just… be careful, OK?”

Sansa nodded. Snow wasn’t around, so she added over her shoulder as she strode quickly away, “Just… tell Snow where I went, OK? I’m going to the frat house.”

Shae nodded.

 

**

 

Out on the street, she sped down the sidewalk in the chilly air, her grey trench hanging open and billowing around her legs -- in her haste, she’d not even buttoned it—and she pulled out her phone and called Bree. “Bree, are you busy right now?”

“Kind of, San, I’m on duty, but… what’s up?”

“Look, I’m going over to the Zeta Sigma Tau frat at St. John’s in Queens. I have a feeling those guys are going to be the next targets and I need to get a look at their situation, talk to the guys, see if they’ve seen anything unusual.”

“Well, you know St. John’s isn’t in the 104th.”

“I know,” Sansa answered after a pause, “but I don’t have a partner. I’m not expecting any trouble, I just want to check it out and if you aren’t busy, I’d like to have you there.”

Bree fretted a little. “Well… look, I can probably slip out, but… I think we really ought to call the 107th. I’ve locked horns a couple times with those guys and Captain Buckwell gets really pissy about other precincts punking around on their turf.”

“Look, we’ll call them after, as a courtesy, to let them know,” Sansa promised before dipping down into the subway. “I mean, if it seems like these guys have anything to worry about, of course they’re going to want to go to the 107. But at this point, I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. I just have a feeling based on the track record of these assaults that these guys might be the next target.”

What she left out of course, was the venom in Arya’s reaction when they watched the report on television. The argument they’d had in which Arya essentially advocated for the activities of these bikers. Bree knew all that.

 

 

**

 

Myrcella Barteón dragged her wheeled suitcase behind her through the brightly lit hubbub of Kennedy Airport. She was dying for a cigarette, but she hadn’t told her mother that she’d started smoking. This was absurd, of course; she was nearly thirty, an account supervisor in the “issues and crisis management” group in the Buenos Aires office of the communications company left behind by her father. But the weight of her mother's expectations was no less crushing. She was willing to wager that even Tommy, who was now the actual Mayor of New York, was no freer of that than she was. In fact, it was probably ten times worse for him, since Mom had gotten him elected and was one of his chief advisers.

Everyone Myrcella worked with smoked. Everyone, it appeared, in the entire city of Buenos Aires smoked. It had been inevitable that she would start. But she knew her mother reserved the same sort of disdain for smokers that the well meaning Christian ladies of temperance during the prohibition reserved for drunkards. And so, she’d put off telling her.

She saw her mother waiting outside the terminal, leaning against a black town car, wearing a radiant smile that looked as if she’d been saving up months of sunshine just to smile for her right now. She knew her mother missed her, but Myrcella was happier in Argentina, far away from her aggressive, stifling, smothering “love.”

“Myrcella!” Cersei exclaimed, crushing her in an embrace.

“Mom,” Myrcella acknowledged, returning the hug, but with far less gusto than her mother.

“How was your flight?” Cersei asked, opening the car door for her to sweep her briskly inside of it, and then getting in after.

“Fine,” she sighed, hauling her suitcase in and then positioning herself in the corner, relaxing and stretching her long legs out in the roomy back of the car. “Too long, though.” She yawned. “How’s Tommy?”

The car started, and purred away from the curb and headed toward the highway back to Manhattan.

Her mother started running through the “best of” reel of the six months since they’d last seen each other. Myrcella listened quietly, but was finding herself too twitchy to adequately pay attention, so she surrendered, and casually as she could, she pulled the grey and burgundy pack of Jockey “Suaves” from her purse, rolled the window down, popped a cigarette between her lips, and moved to light up.

Cersei broke off in mid-sentence. “What the fuck is that?” she demanded coldly.

“Jockey Suaves,” Myrcella replied. “One of the most popular brands in Argentina. They’re a client of ours.”

Cersei continued giving her the cold stare, saying nothing.

“Mom, everyone in Buenos Aires smokes.”

It didn’t matter. The driver noticed that she was about to light up and apologized in heavily accented English, “I’m sorry, Miss, there is no smoking in the car.”

Myrcella frowned and put the pack away. _“Lo siento, amigo. En Buenos Aires, fuman en todas partes.” I’m sorry friend, in Buenos Aires they smoke everywhere._

The driver smiled, a little surprised, and nodded. “ _Si, si. Lo sé, lo sé._ ”

Cersei was clearly about to give Myrcella a berating of some sort, but mercifully, her phone rang. She answered it. “Yes?”

Myrcella listened but couldn’t make out what the other person was saying. She just saw the intent look on her mother’s face that usually scared her a little.

“Yes,” her mother was saying. “Wendell Manderly, are you sure?... And what is she looking for? ...Do you have any idea what he said?.... Where is she now? ....Are you sure about that? ...Is she alone?.... No, no that’s good.” Cersei. “Thank you, Shae.”

She hung up the phone.

“What was that?” Myrcella asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know.

“Bad news.”  


	29. Purple Asters and Goldenrod

The days were getting colder and shorter, and Jaime and Bran had decided to enjoy what remained of the milder fall weather while they had the chance. They sat on a low stone wall in the pale late afternoon light that crept through the trees and trellises of the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park; they fended off its accompanying chill with enormous lattes from Starbucks, and complained about the early dark. Jaime mused aloud that they could have almost been taken for a gay couple; their stylish haircuts, black peacoats, and the odd coincidence of both wearing plaid cashmere scarves from Burberry.

Bran dismissed him. “Maybe you’re handsome enough to be mistaken for a gay guy, but _I_ certainly am not.” They chuckled.

Bran then remarked that this was the first time he’d been back to the garden since before his accident: situated in what was probably the hilliest part of the park, getting into it was a chore even for the able bodied. Nothing but winding steps that twisted around the hills, so obviously off limits to him when he was in the chair. His favorite plantings, the tulips outside of the thatched cottage, were out of season, of course, but the purple asters and goldenrod near the fountain still burst with color.

“This is one of those things that I forgot I even missed when I lost my legs,” Bran commented, swinging his new ones lightly and listening to the heels of the rubber-padded feet making soft thuds against the stone wall. Jaime noticed that Bran often didn’t bother with shoes; he didn’t need them, and he seemed to like the sleek, high-tech look of his prosthetic feet. He looked at Jaime then, and said very sincerely, “Thanks again.”

Jaime waved him off. “It’s nothing. It’s not like I bought them for you. I just put you in touch with the right people.”

“Yeah,” Bran persisted, “but… you put me in touch with the right people. I wouldn’t have known about these if it hadn’t been for you. I know it’s been a tough year for you too, and I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me this year.”

 _You have no idea how tough,_ Jaime thought, but bit his tongue. “Bran, I really haven’t done anything but be a friend.”

And he felt his gut plummet into his shoes as Bran looked hard at him and said, “Yeah, but I really needed that. Things seem to be coming together now with my family, it’s hard to explain, but I was feeling really alone for a while and it’s… it’s meant a lot, that’s all.”

Jaime smiled, a little pained. “I’m glad I could do a little to help. I know what it’s like to lose a part of yourself physically and then feel like half your life went down the drain along with it.” He held up his right hand, the prosthetic one, and quipped, “On the upside though, this is the one part of me that _isn’t_ chilly right now.”

Bran laughed a little, and they had one of those awkward silences that they often did, smiling at each other, Jaime wanting to say much more, and never being able to bring himself to do it.

Jaime’s phone began playing something bluesy loudly from his pocket. He fished it out. It was Cersei. He had no choice but to answer it. “Hi, Cersei.”

“Where are you?”

“Central Park, why?”

“Are you alone?”

“No.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

Jaime didn’t like the way this was going. “Why? What should I be worried about?”

“I told you if Jorah didn’t take care of things, that I was going to. She’s getting too close, Jaime. I’m taking care of things.”

He closed his eyes. “Cersei… look, I’m with Bran Stark right now…”

“I fucking told you,” she snapped. “I fucking told you, and now he’s your alibi for this. I told you it was a terrible idea and you didn’t listen.”

A long silence went by. Jaime’s mind was racing, trying to work out what in hell was the right thing now. “Right now?” he finally asked.

“Yes, right now. Take your pet Stark out for dinner or something,” she ordered. “Then take him home and come by my place. Use the Lyonsbank car service so that there’s a receipt and a record of it. Your niece got in from Buenos Aires this afternoon and she’s dying to see you.”

Jaime’s jaw stiffened. “Fine.” He hung up, and looked at Bran, who was gazing at him with concern.

“You okay, Jaime?” the younger man asked, his voice worried.

Jaime gritted his teeth. He couldn’t. He couldn’t lie to this kid anymore. He couldn’t let his sister do what she was going to do while he used Bran as an alibi for it. “No, uh… not really.”

Bran stood up, walking closer. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

Jaime let an agonized groan bubble up from somewhere in his chest. “Bran, you have to get hold of Sansa. She’s in danger.”

This clearly had not been what Bran was expecting. “What?” he mouthed, looking confounded.

“Sansa. She’s in danger. Wherever it is she’s headed right now, there are going to be people at the other end waiting to make sure she doesn’t go home.”

Bran was still having trouble processing what Jaime was saying. “What…? Why?”

Jaime sighed. How much could he give without giving away everything? He clenched his good hand inside of his coat pocket. “She’s… she’s investigating something, Bran, and she doesn’t have any idea the can of worms she’s about to open up. And… and there are some powerful people who really want her to stop.”

Bran was looking Jaime up and down, now. “Is this a joke?”

“No. Please believe me. I wouldn’t joke about something like this, Bran. Not after what you’ve already been through.”

“That was your sister, though…” Bran answered, slowly putting together the fact that none of this made any sense. “Why does your sister care what happens to Sansa? And why was she calling you about it? She didn’t know you were with me.”

He took a few agitated steps back from Jaime.

Jaime gritted his teeth some more and answered, “Please, Bran, please don’t make me tell you everything. I don’t want you to lose your sister. I don’t want anyone else in your life to get hurt. Can’t that just be enough?”

Bran was starting to get frustrated with this. “No! It doesn’t make any sense!” And then it did, as the recognition dawned on Bran’s face. “Your sister is the one who wants Sansa out of the way, isn’t she.” He ran his nervous fingers through his hair, moaning, “Goddamnit, my mother told me not to be friends with you, she told me your fucking family was nothing but a problem and I didn’t listen to her!”

“Hey!” Jaime interrupted. “If you weren’t friends with me, you wouldn’t have the opportunity to warn Sansa right now. Please, Bran, just do it, okay?”

But Bran wasn’t satisfied. “No, Jaime. What else aren’t you telling me?! What is Sansa investigating that is endangering her life? Why??” He stepped closer to Jaime now, fists balling up at his sides.

Jaime took a step back. “Bran, I can’t … I can’t rat my sister out, but… I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I _never_ wanted for anyone to get hurt.”

“What are you talking about? _Who_ else? WHO, JAIME?” He stepped closer.

Heart racing, he placed his hands out in front of him, trying to calm Bran down. “Bran, your sister is investigating something that is going to get Cersei in a lot of trouble. Just… tell her she’s in danger. Tell her to back off…”

“BACK OFF OF WHAT?” Bran demanded.

“Bran, the less you know, the better,” Jaime pleaded.

“No, Jaime,” Bran insisted, his voice shaking. “You need to tell me EVERYTHING. RIGHT NOW. Because all I can see is that you’ve been lying to me, I don’t know for how long, maybe the whole time you’ve been my friend, and I NEED TO KNOW WHY!”

They stood regarding each other for a moment, breaths heaving in clouds between them.

Jaime looked away. “Bran… your sister has been secretly investigating your father’s death.”

“Why? I thought they closed the case. They found the suspect but he was shot while resisting arrest.”

“Yeah… well… that’s the official story. But your sister wasn’t buying it. Someone moved her to Midtown South, _knowing_ she’d investigate, of course. She’s your father’s daughter, how could she not?" Jaime said wretchedly. "Someone put her there, _knowing_ she’d be in harm’s way. I don’t know who it was.”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with you,” Bran bit out; his voice was cold, but his face looked like he was about to be sick.

Jaime knew that this was going to end badly. There was no way around it. But he couldn’t stand it anymore. “It wasn’t what really happened. My sister was involved in covering up what really happened. And… Sansa is getting too close to the truth.”

“What really happened?” Bran demanded, his voice filled with quiet, simmering rage.

Jaime thought back to that awful night, all those years ago, when he and Cersei were so young; that night when she had accidentally pushed Melara Hetherspoon down that well. He had helped her cover it up. They never told anyone. And god knows, that lie ate at him, but Cersei had been the one carrying the burden of having actually killed the girl. Suddenly, it was less mysterious to him how the weight of that night might have transformed her into who she’d become; how it might have slowly rotted away and soured all her sweetness. She’d always been brash, brittle, hot-tempered… but there used to be a gentle side, too. He rarely saw it now. He wanted no part of going down the same path.

“It was an accident, Bran… It was a terrible accident, it shouldn’t have happened. And … she was just trying to protect her own, like anyone would under those circumstances.”

Bran’s eyes began to well up, his face wrenched with hurt and disgust. He shook his head. “You can’t be serious. You can’t be telling me it was you. This entire time, it was you. I can’t believe you. You’re fucking with me or something,” he rasped, hardly able to breathe.

Jaime’s eyes pleaded for forgiveness but knew he would find none. “You’re right to feel that way, Bran … Bran, I’m so sorry, I can’t… I can’t take it back… I wish it hadn’t…”

Bran lunged forward at Jaime and swung at his head. “YOU TOOK MY DAD FROM ME!”

Jaime instinctively blocked with his right hand. Bran wound up slamming his fist into the prosthetic and then with a sharp little cry of hurt, jumped back, his hand smarting. He stopped for a moment and shook it, as if trying to shake the pain out of it. He recovered quickly and ran at him again, swinging from the left to try and avoid the hand that had just caused him pain. Jaime backed off again, not wanting to hurt him, but when Bran came at his throat, his fencing instincts kicked in and he moved aside and let Bran tumble past him, sure he was going to hit the ground.

But he didn’t. He caught himself. Not exactly gracefully, but he didn’t hit the pavement. He recovered and wheeled around to face him, panting.

“Good catch,” Jaime told him through heavy breaths, legitimately impressed.

“Yeah, Bronn’s been working with me on my balance,” Bran replied, and came at him again.

“Bran, I don’t want to hurt you,” Jaime warned, backing away.

“It’s a little late for that,” Bran almost sobbed through gritted teeth, getting his hands around Jaime’s throat.

Jaime coughed and gagged for a minute, not pushing him off, not moving, wanting Bran to see that he meant it. “Bran….” He choked out. “Your sister…”

Tears in his eyes, Bran let go of him and watched him gulp for air, the hurt and betrayal and disgust and hatred written all over his face.

“Bran, I’ve been trying to-“

“Just don’t,” Bran interrupted. “Just get out of here.” They looked at each other, chests heaving, for a minute. Jaime had brought him to his new legs. He'd convinced him to get the bike, which brought him back to Arya, and given him Meera. He'd given him advice on all the painful dysfunctions of his family. He had been trying to do right. 

He turned and ran out of the garden, heading toward the most treacherous of its exits.

But he needn’t have. Bran had only one concern now, and that was his sister. He called her, and when he reached her voice mail, he left a sobbing message, pleading with her that wherever she was headed, to not go, to turn around and go home, and to please call him because he couldn't believe what had just happened to him, and he didn’t know what the fuck to do right now.  He just stood there for a few minutes, through blurred tears that chilled his face, looking at the sun going down on the purple asters and goldenrod.


	30. Into the Grey

“It’s too cold today for this shit,” Arya complained as she clambered into her sport bra and a stretchy flannel shirt. A few moments ago, she’d been tangled in warm, delicious Dany, and the thought of biking up to the ass end of Queens held about as much appeal as the idea of swimming in the dankest part of the East River in mid-December.

Dany, already in her biking gear, paused from wrapping her hijab for a half second to let herself watch her grumpy lover getting dressed in the mirror. “Aww,” she cooed, “you want some hot cocoa when we get home?”

Arya stuck her tongue out and then popped her shirt over her head, buckled her belt, and took a quick inventory of her pockets.

It had been a bumpy couple of weeks since they’d made their appearance at the clinic with Bran and Meera. Empress was livid with them, despite every justification they’d given, and Asha, stepping up in defense of the rest of the girls, nearly came to blows with her. After that, Obara had goaded them to go all-in on this clinic thing, so they’d shown up at a few others to do as they’d done for Bran & Meera, and, in an evening that made Arya remember their good old days, they trashed an Operation Rescue office that had sprung up, seemingly overnight, in a cruddy storefront in what used to be Hell’s Kitchen.

Empress had sent them a bunch of angry texts, then locked them out of the clubhouse and then… nothing for the last week or so. Arya had decided to leave it be for the time being. They had, after a quick vote, decided to go through with the final outing that Empress had assigned them; Arya’s baby, the St. John’s frat. She and Dany had been tailing the guys for the last couple of weeks, getting their routine figured out, and they were on their way over to the frat house now to do a little more observation before making their move.

Arya wandered over to where Dany was finishing up, peeled the leather collar of her jacket back, and planted a kiss on the side of her neck.

“Maybe it’s for the best that Empress isn’t involved any more,” Arya sighed, more to herself than to Dany.

Dany turned to look at her, hair bound up under a sapphire blue fabric that had little threads of silver through it. “You’re taking it personally,” she observed.

“Maybe,” Arya shrugged. “But you know… I don’t know. Maybe Obara’s right? Maybe we should be more political or… or something.” She paused, giving Dany an awkward look. “What… I mean… well, what’s your religion say about something like… like what we’ve been doing?”

Dany sighed, giving Arya that smile of bottomless sweetness. She hooked her arms around Arya’s waist. “It says a lot about forgiveness. If you slap me in the face, for example, I am supposed to forgive you. But it also says if I find you, for instance, hitting and hurting again and again, then it’s only right for me to fight you, and stop you.”

“So… basically, we’re cool?” Arya guessed, hopeful, but half-grinning. She was kidding, but sort of not.

Dany laughed, and Arya felt it warm her toes. “Yes,” she allowed after a moment.

Arya extricated herself and cast about for her helmet. “Anyway, I don’t care if we patch it up with Empress after this or not. What we’re doing is righteous, you know, and I don’t regret any of it, but in a way, it’s not enough.”

Dany arched an eyebrow, zipping her jacket. “Bigger plans, hm?”

Arya shrugged. “I don’t know about plans. I just… I don’t know.” She pulled out her phone and checked the time. “We’d better get moving.”

 

For all the riding that they did with Phaedra’s as a pack, Arya loved it best when it was just the two of them, lunging forward at the world with the roar of the engines beneath her, the bike’s animal growl vibrating through her whole small frame, and the girl she loved more than anything racing along beside her. It felt powerful, primal, and it was something that she hadn’t shared with anyone else she’d even thought she might have loved. She understood now why her mother and father had continued to do their damnedest to make time for the ritual of Sunday rides together. She was surprised, as she and Dany made their way up the BQE, that the thought of her parents sharing something like this made her eyes warm and watery, and her throat close up a little in spite of her best efforts; she missed seeing them ride away, her dad on the Indian that she now rode, and Catelyn on the old black metallic Goldwing that her dad had stenciled “My Queen” on the side of. Sentimental dope.

God, she missed him. He and Dany would have loved each other.

They came up a few blocks from the frat house, parked their bikes under a broken street lamp (this neighborhood seemed plagued with a number of these), and strolled up in the direction of the house, mentally checking off details of the block as they went. This was a relatively clean, safe part of Queens, blocks crammed with boxy brick row houses, close enough to the boulevard its steady stream of traffic was clearly audible. It wasn’t dangerous, but it was ugly as sin. Arya remembered a line from one of her favorite movies, State of Grace: Gary Oldman complains about driving through Queens, but when Sean Penn offers to drive, Gary Oldman replies, “Nah, then I’d have to look out the window.”

In front of the place, they paused, watching as a car full of "bros" pulled into the driveway. They took out a couple of cigarettes and went through the pantomime of giving each other lights, watching to see whether their marks were in that car.

“You know, they were probably all complicit. That’s the way it works with these things,” Arya grumbled as she puffed without inhaling too much. “We should probably just torch the whole place.”

Dany frowned at her. “You don’t mean that.”

Arya shrugged, doing her best to blow smoke. “I guess not… God, this tastes like shit,” she suddenly realized.

She felt a sudden hand on her shoulder, firm and familiar. She spun around. She found herself face to face with Sansa.

There was a long moment where they stood there, frozen, staring each other down.

Sansa spoke first. “When did you start smoking, Arya?” Her voice was ice against Arya’s face.

Arya tilted her chin up. “Maybe it’s a new thing.”

Another long silence. Sansa looked them up and down, then shook her head. “You’re not even holding it like a smoker. You’re holding it like a pot smoker. I _should_ arrest you two right now.”

“For what?” Arya challenged. “Smoking on the sidewalk in Queens? Crack work, there, Detective.” She couldn’t help it though – she was unnerved that Sansa had found her way here.

“Arya, Dad’s Indian was on the news when you guys went to the clinic. It was on a security camera the night you guys got picked up for vandalizing that shop in Sunset Park. I haven’t found a way to tie you to the other hits, not yet, but… what else could you be doing here? You’re casing the frat house, because those guys walked.”

Arya stomach and chest grew hot. All she had done, all the hard work she had done to be her own person, to not have to be a Stark, and here she was. Her big sister was still the “good kid” and she was still the “bad kid.” Her free hand balled up in her coat pocket. “You know it’s not right, San. You know it’s not.” She dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her boot.

Sansa shook her head. “Yeah, sometimes guilty people walk, Arya. And it sucks. That doesn’t mean you go and exact your own justice.”

“You know why they walked?” Arya demanded, fighting to control the volume and tenor of her voice. “The girl’s testimony was seen as unreliable because she had ‘mental issues.’ She was on meds for bipolar disorder so that had to mean she was lying, or crazy. Do you understand how wrong that is?”

Sansa just looked sad now. “I know, Arya. I get it. I get how wrong that is. But… beating these guys up isn’t the answer. What am I supposed to do, now? You’re a criminal, as far as the law is concerned.”

“But what about where _you’re_ concerned?” Arya was near tears now. She wanted to believe her sister at least understood. “You never told me what Joffrey did to you, but… wouldn’t you have felt a little better if there had been someone like me --like us-- to make him pay for it? Wouldn’t you feel a little better if you thought that maybe someone had taught him a lesson, that maybe he wouldn’t do it to any other girls?”

That was the moment when she saw Sansa’s face darken. She hated bringing up Joffrey, because whatever had happened, it had been bad enough that Sansa never wanted to talk about it. But she could tell she’d gotten through.

Sansa, after looking at the grungy sidewalk for a moment, shook her head. “Look, Arya… I’m supposed to be working this case, OK? I’m supposed to be trying to catch you right now. It was the official reason why I was moved to Midtown. I can…” She sighed heavily, and looked up, meeting Arya’s eyes with her own ice blue stare. “You have to stop doing this stuff, Arya. I…I can just… I can just _not catch_ you… if you promise to stop.” Her tone was cool, but Arya recognized the begging in her look. “Whoever has been helping you, you’ve been careful. You’ve covered your tracks. They were pretty much lost when I got in there, so.” She trailed off.

“Yeah, well. We have someone who knows the system.” They shared an uneasy look. “Anyway. Look, I’m not going to promise we aren’t going to do this one, but I can promise there won’t be anything after.” She turned and Dany gave her a single silent nod.

A dented black Camry pulled up alongside them, and Bree leaned out the window, calling out with a grin, “Excuse me, Officer, can you stop these miscreants from smoking in front of my house, please?” She stopped, recognizing Arya and Dany, and suspicion immediately clouded her cheer. “What are you two doing here?”

“Just leaving,” Arya replied. “Good to see you, Bree.” Arya and Sansa looked at each other one last time and then Arya touched Dany’s arm and they booked off down the street, making long strides toward where they’d parked their bikes.

 

 

Sansa got into the car. Bree laid her large hand over Sansa’s smaller one. “What the hell was that? You look like shit.”

Sansa shook her head. “My sister is part of the biker thing. I had a feeling for a while now, but now it’s confirmed. I came here to check the frat house out and talk to the guys, because I suspected they were going to be the next target, and she and her girlfriend were here casing the place.”

Bree gave a heavy sigh. “God, San. What are you going to do?”

Sansa threw her hands up in resignation. “What _can_ I do? I can’t arrest my sister. I told her she has to stop and I’m going to just… _not catch_ her.” It killed her to even think about letting her sister go on this, but she couldn’t deny that a part of her felt queasy at the idea that she had come out here to protect the safety of guys who had, in all likelihood, raped an emotionally unstable girl and gotten away scot-free. Arya had issues; so did her aunt Lysa, though Sansa knew less about them. She felt sick at the thought that they could potentially be victimized and not get justice simply because they were anything less than one hundred percent whole.

She could see a few blocks away up on the corner on the boulevard, the bright lights of a diner. “There’s no point to talking to these frat guys now. Do you have time to grab a coffee before you go back to the station?”

Bree glanced at the clock in the car, then pulled close to the curb and parked. “Yeah, a quick one. Let’s go.”

As they walked up the steps of the diner, Sansa felt her phone vibrate. She had a message. When she pulled it out, she saw that Bran had called her a bunch of times. It must have been while she was in the subway. Then she reached into her pocket again for her notepad and realized that she must have left it in the car somehow. “I’m just gonna run back for my pad, ok? It must have fallen out of my pocket in the car. Can you get us a table, or a spot at the counter or something?”

Bree nodded, casting a wary eye down the darkening block, but didn’t say anything other than, “Okay. Hurry up.”

Sansa winked at her. “Baby, I have a badge, a gun and a license to kill. I’ll be fine walking to the car and back.”

“I know,” Bree mumbled, her ears turning a little red. She tossed Sansa the car keys and went inside.

Sansa jogged back down the block to where the car was parked, underneath yet another of this neighborhood’s stuttering street lamps. _Why had Bran called so many times?_ she wondered. She pulled out her phone again, unlocked the car, and slid into the driver’s seat, listening to his message as she pawed around the passenger seat and felt around on the floor, looking for her pad.

She heard his voice, in tears: “San… San, for the love of Christ, please, I hope you check this message…”

She stiffened.

“…San, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know everything but you’re not safe right now…”

She sat up straight.

“...Wherever it is you’re going… please don’t go. Please… turn around and just go somewhere else. Go to Bree’s house. Whatever. Jaime told me that you’re investigating dad’s death and … you’re getting too close…”

Sansa’s heart started pounding hard.

“…He said they were gonna try to do something to you tonight… Please, San, call me when you get this, let me know you’re OK. I… think it was Jaime that killed Dad and…”

The phone went flying from her hand. She suddenly felt something searing hot around her throat as all of her air was cut off. She kicked and struggled but trying to buck forward made the hot pain around her neck even worse. A man’s voice rasped into her ear, “Sssshh, pretty lady, don’t fight it, it’s only gonna make it worse.”

Each second felt like an eternity as she tried to figure out how to get herself out of this. She wouldn’t be able stay conscious for more than ten, probably. She’d be dead in twenty. She fumbled at her holster but her fingers were already feeling cold and she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

And then as quickly as it happened, suddenly, she was breathing again. Cold air rushed into her lungs. It rushed into the car. She was aware of hearing the back door open. She marshaled her reserves, turning around just in time to see Bree opening the back door and reaching in to punch her mysterious assailant in the face.

It was happening so quickly it was a blur. She saw his head snap back with the force of Bree’s blow, and then she saw a muzzle flash, heard the short, sharp whine of a bullet being fired through a silencer, and saw Bree stumble back into the street. As if having an out of body experience, she saw herself lunge over the back seat, Glock in her tingling hand, and with the butt of it, pistol-whipping him in the back of the head. He weaved, but didn’t fall. She struck him again, harder. This time, he slumped down against the upholstery.

She jumped out of the car and ran to where Bree stood, clutching her shoulder, a few feet back from the rear door that was still hanging open. “Are you ok?” Bree asked her.

Sansa fingered the hot, sore line of raised skin all the way around her neck, still in slight disbelief that she was breathing. She nodded. “Yeah. You?”

Bree nodded, but then pulled her hand away. There was a dark spot of blood showing through her jacket.  "See?  I knew you shouldn't have gone alone."

“You’re shot!” Sansa realized. “Jesus, we have to get you to the hospital!”

“What about him?” Bree asked through heavy breaths, pointing at the guy in the track suit who was slumped over in the back seat of her car. “Arrest him, bring him in, what?”

Sansa shook her head. Damnit, if she had only checked Bran’s message when she got off the train, Bree wouldn’t be standing here bleeding. “Bring him in? I don’t know what he knows. I bring him in…” She looked at him again, his silver hair in a close-cropped Caesar cut, the track suit, the medallion… “…he just stays mum till he gets some mobster lawyer to spring him. I’m still in danger, and then on top of that I’m caught investigating something I’m not supposed to be. No,” she decided. “It’s no good.”

Bree pressed her hand back on her bleeding shoulder. “What, then?”

Sansa picked up her phone. After a hesitation, she called Arya. It rang several times before she picked up. She was somewhere noisy, windy…

“What do you want, San?”

Sansa closed her eyes, and took a breath. “I need you, Arya.”

A confused pause. “OK.”

“Someone just tried to kill me…”

“WHAT?”

“Just listen, just listen. It wasn’t the frat, this isn’t about that. This is about our family. I’ve been investigating Dad’s death because I didn’t buy the story, and someone, Bran thinks it’s the Lannisters but… I’m getting too close and someone just tried to fucking strangle me in Bree’s car.”

She could hear Arya mentally changing gears. “What do you need from me?”

“I can’t bring this guy in, not yet. I don’t know what he knows. I don’t want to tell my CO’s that I’ve been doing this investigation because I’m not supposed to be doing it, it’s not what I’m there for.”

“So you need someplace to bring this guy so you can get answers out of him before you decide what to do with him,” Arya finished.

“Exactly.”

There was a long pause. “Well, we’ve been locked out of our clubhouse for the last week. But I’ll text you the address. I’m sure once I explain to Empress why we need to get in, she’ll help us.”

“Who’s…? Whatever. Fine. Send me the address. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

She looked up at Bree, who was giving her nervous eyes. “San, are you sure you’re okay with this option? This seems a little… ‘grey area’ for your liking.”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to drop you off at a hospital and then…”

They paused, as they heard the sound of approaching sirens. Sirens weren’t unusual in any part of the five boroughs, but Bree looked down the block and saw that two unmarked squad cars with sirens on top were coming _this way_.

“San, if you’re going to go, you better go right now. I don’t know why they’re coming, but if you’re going to do this, you don’t want anyone seeing you with this guy.”

Sansa quickly cuffed the guy’s hands behind his back, shoved him back into the car, and slammed the door. “What about you? I have to take you to a…”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. If this needs handling, I’ll handle it. Take the car. Go.”

Sansa paused for a moment, but she knew Bree was right. She hopped into the car and sped away toward the boulevard, away from the flashing lights at the other end of the block.


	31. Shot at Redemption

Tyrion Lannister loved Puccini, and most especially loved La Boheme. He was certainly not delusional enough to think himself any sort of actual bohemian; his East Village one-bedroom was too well-appointed for that. But he loved the achingly gorgeous strains of “Si, Mi Chiamo Mimi” when he was sober, and even better when he was a little bumped, as he was now, with the heat in place turned up, standing in his living room in his boxer shorts, conducting the invisible orchestra.

His phone rang. He picked it up with mild irritation, and saw it was his little girlfriend. His favorite one, anyhow. He picked it up. “Hello, sweet thing. What do you want?”

She was not her usual flirtatious self. “What the fuck, Tyrion?”

Hm. She seemed unhappy. “Fine, thank you darling, how are you?”

“Fuck you, Tyrion.”

He sighed. “Actually, I was just thinking I’d get us some reservations somewhere nice for tomorrow night, Peter Luger’s, maybe?”

“Fuck you, Tyrion,” she repeated. “I agreed to keep an eye on Sansa Stark for your sister. I did not sign up to be a party to wasting anyone, especially not a fellow officer.”

Tyrion sighed again. “Honey, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Apparently, your sister is trying to kill Sansa Stark. _Her_ brother called here a little while ago in hysterics, because apparently that fuckwit brother of _yours_ spilled to him that it was going down tonight.”

“What was going down tonight?”

“Your sister! Putting a hit on Stark!” she cried with frustration. “I signed up for a little babysitting, Tyrion. Stark’s a good cop and I’m fucking pissed that you set me up with your bitch sister without telling me this was part of the deal.”

Tyrion made some soothing sound into the phone. “I promise, I had no idea.”

“Well, fucking fix it!”

“Honestly, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know, call your brother, make him do something!”

Tyrion didn’t speak.

“I mean it, Tyrion, fucking fix this or I’m dumping you.”

He sighed. “Oh, alright, _Officer Shae_.”

He hung up and called Jaime. “Where are you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Tyrion chuckled. “So it’s true, then. You interfered with our sister’s plans to do the unthinkable to the Stark girl.”

A beat. “Yes.”

“Does Mormont know about it?”

Another beat. “Don’t think so.”

“Well, you’d better fix that. If Detective Stark turns up dead, my girlfriend is dumping me.”

“How awful for you. I’m glad you’re concerned for _my_ well-being at the moment.”

“I _am_ concerned, Jaime. That’s why you should loop him in. Maybe he can bail both of your stupid asses out. Again.”

 

 

Bree lay in the hospital bed, her shoulder bound up, slightly high on morphine. It had been roughly an hour since she’d been shot, and it was starting to catch up with her; the exhaustion, the awareness that her shoulder was burning (though the morphine kept her oddly disconnected from the actual pain). It hadn’t been bad, though, and they’d been able to get the bullet out right away.

The cop cars that showed up, as it turned out, weren’t from the 107th. They weren’t coming in response to the shot. They were from Midtown South. Snow, the browbeaten detective in charge of the group, told Bree (after she showed her badge) that Sansa reported to him; that Sansa’s brother had called the precinct, frantically trying to get someone on the phone who knew where she was, and Snow had decided, after a terse back and forth with the hysterical kid, to take a couple of cars out to where Shae had told him she was going.

Bree couldn’t very well play completely dumb with a gunshot wound in her shoulder, so she was as truthful as she could be: she was Stark’s old partner from the 104th, still a close friend, and had slipped out to come meet her so she wouldn't have to talk the frat guys alone. She hadn’t spoken to Bran Stark, hadn’t heard the message or what was in it. She didn’t know who the guy was that had attacked Stark, or who had sent him. She didn’t know where Stark was taking him, though she helpfully suggested that perhaps she was bringing him over to the 107th.

Snow had shaken his head, giving her a cynical smile. “I sure hope not. Buckwell’s a prick. That’s why I came out here myself instead of calling and asking them to check it out.”

Snow had kindly chauffeured Bree to the nearest hospital, asking a few more times if she could try and get hold of Sansa again to find out where she was taking the guy. Bree hedged, pretended to send her a text. She pressed him for any information about Bran’s call, but he was equally cagey. He left his number and asked her to call if he heard from Sansa.

Satisfied that she had done what she could, she fell into a dark, drugged sleep. She woke to the sound of a man’s voice, familiar but not someone she knew.

“Detective Tarth.”

She opened her eyes. Sitting next to her bed, looking at her with a great deal of concern, was Commissioner Mormont.

She struggled to sit up, but was still too drugged. “Sir…”

“No need to get up on my account, Detective,” he reassured her. She’d seen him on television of course, and a few times in person, if from a bit of a distance. He was instantly recognizable, but… he also seemed smaller, more tired than he’d appeared under those other circumstances. _Well, I guess nobody looks good under fluorescent lights_ , she thought, silently cracking herself up, if no-one else.

She tried to claw through what felt like sawdust in her brain to make sense of the situation. “What… what are you doing here?”

Mormont gave her a wan smile. “You took a bullet for Detective Stark, is that right?”

She nodded.

“I took a bullet for my partner once. As a rookie. That’d be… well, a very long time ago, now. We were sent in on a B&E call and the perp was still inside. Came around the corner, my partner wanted to go in first, but I had to be the big hero…” He eyed her bandage. “Got hit not too far from where you got hit tonight. Still got the scar.”

Bree said nothing, just looked at him, silent and wary.

“Do you know where she is?”

She shook her head.

“But you know how to get hold of her.”

She didn’t respond for a long moment. “Why are you here, sir?” she asked finally.

He took a deep breath. “Your friend is… well, she’s in what my old drill sergeant used to call a world of shit. She’s pissed off the wrong people.”

Bree gave him a cautious eyeing-up. “Respectfully, sir, how do I know _you_ aren’t the wrong people?”

He leaned forward in his chair. “I take it she’s told you about her… under the table investigation, then?”

“Not everything, but, yes, sir.”

“And what do you think about it?”

She gave him a hard look, then. “I don’t know what I think, sir. I think it’s a shit situation.”

He nodded approvingly. “You’ve got that right, Detective. And I’ll tell you what I think: you don’t trust me.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she replied: “No, sir, I don’t.”

He sighed, paced over to the door and shut it, then walked back over and sat down again. “Well, you’d be right not to. I’m a questionable bastard, to be honest. But… I’m also probably the only one who can help her right now. She’s expending department resources for personal use, investigating a closed case that she wasn’t assigned to, and she’s got the deputy mayor looking to put her in the ground.”

Bree let her face register surprise. “What does the deputy mayor have to do with any of this?”

“Detective Stark may have been chasing me, but the trail would have led her straight to Cersei Lannister.”

He let those words sink in for a moment.

“And you came here because…?” she finally asked.

“Jaime Lannister, for his own reasons, I suppose, contacted me and alerted me to the situation. After a few phone calls, it became clear that you were the person I needed to speak to.”

Bree said nothing, waiting for him to go on.

He slumped down in the chair, suddenly, as if something were crushing him. Bree wasn’t necessarily sharp with details the way Sansa was, but she had a good gut instinct for bullshit, and when he spoke now, she didn’t sense any.

“You’re still a white knight. I can see it,” he began wearily. “You became a cop because you wanted to help people. I was the same way. I come from a cop family, and we do it because you’re supposed to help people. Truth, justice, all that. The badge means something to you, not just power, but duty and responsibility. Protect and serve.”

He searched her face, but she said nothing.

“I understand that,” he went on. “I feel that too, or I did before things fell apart. They have a way of doing that, don’t they?” He took something out of his breast pocket and dropped it on the side table next to the bed. It flipped open: an old badge. “That was mine, my old one, from the early eighties.”

“Why do you still carry it?” she asked.

“Because it’s easy to forget who you are.” He looked at her wounded shoulder. “Detective, I have done a lot of things in the line of duty that I regret. I let myself drift into the grey because my family was in a desperate situation. I tried to set rules and limits so that I would never find myself in a position of having to do something unambiguously wrong. Hell, I even felt all right about some of the things I took payoffs to do: closing down most of the cathouses in the precinct? I may have been leaving the mob ones alone, and eliminating their competition, but I was still fighting the good fight, wasn’t I?” He shook his head. “It’s so easy to slip down the wrong path and not realize that you’ve done it until you’ve gone too far.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“I want to undo it, if I can.  And to do that, I need to talk to Stark.”

She looked at him, half-collapsed in the chair, hat in his lap, his thinning blond hair and sunken eyes the marks of a man who had lived a long time and built up a lot more regrets than he would have liked.

“Self-imposed exile is a bitch,” she remarked, her voice hoarse.

“You can say that again.”

She struggled to believe that he wanted redemption.

“Just help me reach her,” he pleaded. “You don’t have to tell me where she is.”

“I already told Snow, I don’t know where she is.”

“I know. And that’s fine. Just help me get in touch with her. Let me talk to her. I want to contain this shit-show before it gets any worse.”

She thought of Sansa, driving away with the unconscious would-be killer in the back seat. _San, are you sure you’re okay with this option? This seems a little… ‘grey area’ for your liking._

Frustrated, exhausted, and not at all sure she was making the right decision, she heaved a sigh. “In my jacket pocket. Get me my phone.”


	32. Foreign Expressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn the identity of Empress, and of Sansa's would be assassin.

Lysa’s head throbbed between her hands. This wasn’t a good night for anyone to be asking anything of her. She’d even sent her boy, Robin, to stay with his uncle Edmure for the evening because she knew she wasn’t in a good place to deal with a nineteen year old with Asperger’s.

Tonight was a night where she would spend so much of it scrambling against the darkness. She knew herself well enough to know when she was about to have a night like that. Tonight would have been a good night to take the bike out, she thought. The sensory thing of it was sometimes helpful. It could put her right when other more standard methods did not.

She’d gotten her bike not long after Ned and Cat had gotten theirs, and she’d loved it, even though it didn’t make her any cooler. Ned had stenciled “My Queen” on the side of Cat’s and it was all Lysa could do not to vomit. She kind of felt like vomiting now, as she sat alone, in the dark, tapping away on her laptop, clicking around, looking for something to anchor herself. She shouldn’t be sitting here. She should be out on the bike. She shouldn’t be dealing with anyone else’s problems but her own. She heard them bumping around out in the other room. She knew she was going to have to go out there, sooner or later.

 

 

Sansa pulled up in front of the warehouse on the bombed-out block in Sheepshead Bay. It had to be the place; it looked like it was locked down, but no other building on the block held even the possibility of actual humans inside it. She crunched across the broken glass on the sidewalk, and raised her hand to pound on the metal door, but it opened before she had the chance to strike it.

Arya was on the other side of it, looking grave. “Where is he?”

“In the back seat. Still passed out, or pretending.”

After they managed to drag him inside and lower him into a chair, Sansa looked around. Nondescript black bikes were parked around the outer wall, looking for all the world like the ones in any photo or video anyone had managed to get of the assaults she’d been reviewing for the last month or so. Ten, in total. _But that’s not why I’m here, is it,_ she reminded herself. She engaged the safety, and then set the guy’s gun down on a card table against the wall a few feet away from where they’d restrained him.

“I thought we’d need some help,” Arya explained, walking back to close and bolt the door.

Two other girls waited inside: Dany, and another one that Sansa hadn’t met before, but suspected was probably the Jamaican that Officer Waters had mentioned picking up with them in Sunset Park. _Fucking right again._

“Dany,” Arya said stiffly, “you already know my sister. Sansa, that’s Asha.” She hesitated, trying to explain why she’d brought them, and Asha in particular, who was a stranger to Sansa. “Asha’s, um… well, she’s just… good at handling stuff.”

This must be the “someone who knows the system” that Arya had referred to earlier. But she’d used some other name on the phone. Empress? Sansa couldn’t remember. It was too much work for her to stay cool and focused. It was like trying to think clearly with an army of four year olds banging pots and pans next to her.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Wendell Manderly. She frowned and looked back at the man cuffed in the chair. Still out. She glanced at the others. “Hang on, this might be important.” She picked it up. “Stark.”

“Sansa, it’s Wendell. Listen, I looked at the disclosures and, uh… well, it’s weird. He’s got a couple of trusts with Lyonsbank, like you asked about. And, uh, they add up to… well, more than a cop ought to have, considering that there was no inheritance due to his dad’s dotcom losses.”

Sansa hurried him along. “OK, OK…How much?”

“Almost three million.”

“What?”

“Yeah. It’s spread out among different assets, so it doesn’t look like that much. But a lot of it is tied up in this one fund that I’m very familiar with, that made a ton of money short-selling around the crash.”

“Which makes this something you can’t talk to me any more about.”

“Exactly.”

Sansa breathed hard, integrating the new information. “OK, thanks, Wendell.”

“Whatever you’re looking for, I hope it helps.”

“I think it does.” She hung up and tossed the phone back into her pocket, and then turned back to the girls, who were looking back and forth between her and the man in the chair.

“Okay,” Sansa sighed. “Let’s wake him up.”

“What was that call?” Arya asked.

Sansa shook her head. “Too much to get into now. I think the Police Commissioner took money from the Lannisters to cover up their involvement with dad’s death, that they got wind of my investigating it, and that they sent this guy… whoever he is… to uh, stop any further investigation.”

Asha walked over with a plastic cup of cold water from the shop sink and tossed it in the guy’s face. “Wake up, Sleepin’ Beauty!”

Sansa twitched a bit, wishing Asha had checked with her before doing that, but decided it didn’t matter. She spent a moment watching the guy sputter and shake himself out of unconsciousness, then slapped his face a couple of times, in much the way one slaps a limb that has fallen asleep. “Come on, sunshine, we don’t have all day.” She was cool. Her voice was cool. Inside was a riot of heat and jangling nerves, but outside, she was icy and serene as the peak of a mountain.

Arya took hold of his shoulder and jostled him. “Come on,” she commanded. “Tick tock, motherfucker.”

Sansa stopped and looked sidelong at Arya. “Did you seriously just quote Pulp Fiction?”

Arya shrugged. “It was on last night.”

Sansa rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything more. She saw his mouth twitch in something like a smile at that exchange. He was awake. She planted a foot in between his legs, and told him, with perfect calm, “I have my foot on this chair. This chair is going to go backwards into the cement floor if you don’t stop playing possum and open your eyes so that we can have a friendly conversation.”

His eyes opened, and he looked up at her. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, for an older man, she supposed, though there was something weaselly about his face that she couldn’t pin down. He looked around, seeming surprised. “Detective. This doesn’t look like a police precinct.” He clucked his tongue. “Highly unorthodox.”

“So is trying to murder a cop,” she answered. “Maybe you’d like to tell me who sent you?”

He wheezed out a chuckle. “No, I would not. And you are making a huge mistake right now, Detective.”

“We began this conversation with you trying to choke me, so… I don’t really see how we can go downhill from here.”

He eyed her up, sly and sharp, but said nothing.

“Violence is not my thing,” she went on. “But these girls are actually pretty good at it. So… The only way you walk out of here at all, much less in once piece, is by answering my questions.” She felt sick at the thought of actually having to carry through on her words. But she needed the truth. She needed to know if she was right.

“You know, they didn’t tell me you were so attractive–-“

Sansa punched him in the mouth, not hard, but hard enough to stop him from talking. She was vaguely aware of the impressed look that crossed Arya’s face. “Try something more original.” She rubbed her open palms down the outside of her jacket. “So, who sent you?”

He spit a little blood, not enough to be impressive, and smiled. “You already know, right?”

“Yeah, I know who sent you. I want you to kindly say it for me in so many words, out loud.”

Arya was chomping at the bit. “Come on, let me smack him around with the pipe a little.”

Sansa closed her eyes. _Goddamnit, Arya, shut up_. “Who do you work for?”

“Oh,” he said grandly, “it ain’t like that at all. I don’t work _for_ the people that want you dead. I work _with_ them. It’s more of a… partnership.”

“And who is that?” she repeated.

Arya walked over and socked him a second time, harder than Sansa had. His head snapped back harder this time.

“TALK!” Arya shouted at him.

Sansa waved her back with a calm hand, keeping her eyes focused on his face. “Shall we keep going? Or do you want to wait until she gets out the pipe? Or maybe you want to wait till the blonde gets out her cigarette lighter?” She gestured toward Dany, who took her cue and pulled out the lighter she’d had in her pocket when she lit those cigarettes earlier, and started flicking it repeatedly.

His eyes darted around over all of them and he slowly took in that whoever these other women were, they wore a lot of black leather and they didn’t seem the least bit squeamish about doing whatever they needed to.

Sansa dragged a metal chair over and sat down in front of him, legs crossed, calm and almost looking relaxed. “Let’s start with something easy. What’s your name?”

He hesitated, looking between them. Good cop, bad cop. Or rather good cop, insane biker chicks.

Sansa heard a door swing open behind her at the other side of the warehouse. The other girls looked up. The guy in the chair looked over her shoulder, suddenly stunned. Something had caught him very much off guard.

“His name used to be Petyr Baelish, but that didn’t sound guinea mobster enough. Did it, Petyr.”

Sansa turned around and saw her. She strode into the room, tall, dressed in black riding gear, red hair knotted up off of her neck, with eyes dark and dangerous as any Sansa had ever seen. It took her several solid seconds to absorb what she was seeing -- foreign expressions on a familiar face.

“Didn’t know you were still here, Empress,” Asha remarked, unruffled.

Empress, that was the name Arya had mentioned. But…

“Yes, well, I’m not really feeling up for this tonight but I couldn’t let you idiots fuck this up.”

The guy in the chair –Petyr, he had a name, now— forced a smile. “Didn’t know I would be seeing you tonight, or I woulda worn some cologne. You liked that Drakkar Noir I used to wear, didn’t you, Lysa?”

Sansa’s head started to spin. “Aunt Lysa?” _What the hell is going on here? Why didn’t Arya mention this before? Why does my fucking aunt look like Katey Sagal in “Sons of Anarchy”??_

She nodded at Arya. “Take your sister into the other room and catch her up.”

“No no, you can explain later,” Sansa interrupted. “Who is this guy?”

Lysa smiled. “He works for the Corrato Family. He calls himself Petey Littlefinger.”

“I didn’t pick that name,” he grumbled.

“Oh?” Sansa asked with interest. “Why’d they call you that?”

“You’re a detective, figure it out,” he snapped.

Sansa smirked. Lysa smiled, beatific and creepy. It was possibly the scariest thing Sansa had ever seen.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said to Petey Littlefinger. “I wasn’t mobster-whore enough for you, I guess.” She stepped closer. “You’re going to tell my niece everything, honey. I mean everything.” Her eyes found his gun sitting on the card table. She walked over and picked it up. Not looking at him, she stood turning it over in her hands, musing, “If you catch me on a bad day, there’s no telling what I might do. Remember that about me, Petey?”

His face seemed to say that he did.

Sansa’s hand went to her own holster but she didn’t draw. This Lysa was someone she didn’t know, didn’t recognize, and didn’t know what to do with. She inserted herself in between Littlefinger and her aunt, and leaned down into his face. “Petey, you got sent by Mormont, didn’t you?” she asked him, allowing some quiet menace to seep into her voice.

“Not exactly,” he hedged.

“But he’s involved in this somehow, isn’t he?”

“I do business with him,” he allowed.

“That’s not what I asked.”

They both heard the sound of the safety catch being released on the gun in Lysa’s hand.

“Yeah, he’s involved. He didn’t send me, though,” he quickly volunteered.

“Who did?” Sansa pressed. “Is this about Lyonsbank?”

“It’s not about the bank.”

“Talk faster, Petey,” Lysa’s voice came from behind her.

He took a quick breath, then leveled his eyes right at Sansa. “I give you everything. You let me walk out, right?”

“Fine,” Sansa snapped.

“OK. So, I’ve been working off and on with Cersei Lannister for years. How often does a campaign hack need something dirty done, right?” He met their cold stares and plunged on. “She wanted a high-level cop in her pocket and she knew about his dad losing a whole lotta money –basically everything – so, she sorta brokered a situation with us. The Corrato family would put him on the payroll, so to speak, and get his family straightened out, money-wise. She had him set up some funds at Lyonsbank, and then leaned on her old man to let us launder the payoffs through the bank. So, he’s in Corrato’s pocket on account of being on the payroll. And he’s in her pocket on account of her father’s bank holding his trusts. And I guess you been nosing around about all that, and she couldn’t have you finding that out.”

Arya stepped closer, “Please, can I fuck him up now?”

But Sansa put out a soothing hand. “Thank you for your forthrightness, Petey."  _Cool, cool.  Zen calm._   "Do you have evidence for all of this? You understand, I need that, or else this will have been a waste of time.”

“Yeah, in my office in Crown Heights. I got audio of phone calls. I got ledgers of everything we’ve paid out.”

“Ledgers?”

“I’m a fucking accountant,” he snapped. “Of course I got ledgers.”

Sansa shook her head. “I almost got wasted by an accountant.” She looked at him again, not fully believing him. “So you’re the Corrato Family’s accountant?”

“Just for the hookers. In Brooklyn. And this Mormont thing.”

“Why would you keep all that?”

“In case they got the idea they didn’t need me anymore, I needed the leverage.”

She nodded once, then reached into his pocket. She pulled out his wallet. Along with a wad of cash that was probably several hundred dollars, she found some credit cards, and then a few business cards for an accounting service. “American Freedom Accounting, that’s you, I’m assuming?”

He nodded.

“Great. Anyone over there now?”

He shook his head.

“Good.” She turned to the girls and Lysa. “Can you guys keep an eye on him till I get back? I want this stuff in hand before we decide what to do with him.”

Arya nodded. “I can’t promise I’m not gonna kick the shit out of him a little, though.”

Sansa shook her head and walked back to where he sat. “And this… is for trying to kill me.” She drew her gun and pistol-whipped him in the side of the head, and stood for a moment looking at him, slumped down in the chair.

She turned to her aunt. “OK, we’re gonna talk about this later, because… well, for obvious reasons.” She looked at the weapon in her aunt’s hand. “Are you sure you’re cool with that thing? You know how to handle it? You’re not going to do anything crazy?”

Lysa’s smile was not at all comforting. “Yes, I know how to use it. We’ll be fine.”

Sansa was thoroughly unhappy about the situation, but there was nothing for it. “Arya, come with me. We have to go break into his office.”

Arya’s face hovered in between worry and eagerness. “Are… you sure? Shouldn’t I stay here and… and help watch him?”

“No, apparently you’re good at breaking and entering, and that’s what I need right now.”


	33. Breaking and Entering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lysa does something foolish. Mormont makes Sansa an offer.

Arya seemed weirdly giddy at the two of them heading over to Petey’s office together to break in and steal evidence. “You know that what we’re doing is really kind of illegal and not really right,” Sansa pointed out.

“Whatever,” was her sister’s cheerful reply. “We’re spending time together. Why didn’t you tell me you were trying to find out what happened to Dad?”

“Because, as you’ve seen, this is a very sensitive situation.”

“I bet you told your girlfriend, though,” Arya retorted, though her tone was more wistful than resentful.

Sana sighed. “Yeah, well… I’m sorry. I just…I had to be careful, Arya.” She looked out at her headlights piercing through the night, illuminating the yellow lines on the road. “Speaking of not telling me things…” She banged a fist on the steering wheel. “What the hell, Arya? Why didn’t you tell me Aunt Lysa was involved in your crazy biker thing?”

“Involved?” Arya laughed. “She’s been running the show for months.”

“Well, ok, fine. So what the hell? What’s the deal?”

“The night we got picked up in Sunset Park, Mom got my message, and she called Aunt Lysa to see if she could get me out of trouble and just kind of make the whole thing go away.” Arya sighed. “Aunt Lysa got her message, but instead of calling mom and telling her she was bailing me out, she just came down and did it. She got all four of us out; me, Dany, Meera and Asha. She did make the whole thing go away, as you probably figured out. But… instead of just letting that be that, she decided to um… channel our violent tendencies into something more useful, was what she said. I think it was like, she saw us as an opportunity to right wrongs. I guess being married to Uncle John, she saw a lot of bad guys walk, a lot of guilty people get away on technicalities and stuff like that, and… Maybe she just saw it as a way to put some things right.”

Sansa sighed. “Aunt Lysa is seriously unstable, you know that, right?”

Arya snorted. “Obviously. But you know. Where was my life going, San? Where has my life ever been going? I’m good at fighting. Not much else.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Pinpricks of rain started appearing on the windshield. Sansa felt suddenly ashamed that she hadn’t tried to do more to be there for her, although she wasn’t even sure what that should have been.

“Mom’s coming around lately, but she’s been kind of out to lunch for the last few years. And you haven’t… you know. Been around. I woulda been lost without Bran,” she said quietly.

Sansa’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Shit! Bran. I never called him back!” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and tossed it to Arya. “Here, can you just send him a text and let him know I’m ok?”

Arya did. Bran texted back: _Thank god. Plz call me as soon as you can._

 

The breaking and entering went reasonably well, though Sansa couldn’t help cringing inside, watching how expertly Arya located a cinder block and tossed it through the back window. Nevertheless, she quickly found the stuff she was looking for.

“So what now?” Arya asked, continuing to rifle through the desk drawers despite Sansa having announced that she had what she needed.

“Hey knock it off!” Sansa complained, shoving Arya’s shoulder.

“What? They’re mobsters. It’s all ill-gotten gains, man.” She found a pair of expensive looking Armani shades and popped them on. “Whaddya think?”

“I don’t care how ill-gotten they are. Please, no burglary. Let’s go.”

Arya huffed and put shades down.

As they walked out to the car, Arya’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket. It was Dany.

 

 

Dany and Asha stuck close to each other. Both were looking warily at Lysa, who looked about as unhinged as either of them had ever seen her. Clearly she had some kind of history with this guy, and it was making an already sketchy situation that much worse.

Dany never questioned whether their actions had been righteous, not in all the time they’d been taking direction from Lysa. This guy obviously had tried to kill Sansa, so surely he needed to pay for that, but with very few exceptions, all of Phaedra’s victims had already been through the justice system and seen it fail to do its job.

Lysa was pacing around the clubhouse, Petey’s gun in the waistband of her jeans. She’d march up to him, look at him with withering contempt, stalk away, repeat.

Dany pulled out her phone and texted Asha: _I’m worried_

Asha texted back a few minutes later: _Yeah she don’t look right_

Second after uneasy second ticked by. After what seemed like half an hour, Lysa sat in the chair Sansa had been using, looked intently at Petey for a few moments, and announced, “We’ve gotta wax him.”

“Are you joking?” Dany exclaimed.

“Not really,” Lysa answered with eerie calm. “If we let him walk he’s just gonna send some of his dago goon buddies after your sister. She got his confession. She’s getting his ledgers. She doesn’t need him.”

“Now hold on, stoosh,” Asha protested. “When we signed up with you, we didn’t agree to no killing.”

“It’s necessary,” Lysa insisted, her eyes locked on his face. Her dispassion was unsettling. “He’s a two-bit mobster. Nobody’s going to blink when he turns up in the East River.”

The silence that followed was agonizing. “That’s not really Asha’s point,” Dany finally said.

Petey stirred in his chair. “Lysa,” he rasped under his breath, his eyes not quite open.

Lysa gave him a frosty look. “Petey.”

“Lysa, I didn’t-“

She put a hand on his lips and shushed him. “Sssh, Petey. You stomped on my heart, honey. And then the next time I see you, you’re trying to kill my niece. This upsets me, you understand?”

“Come on, Lys,” he wheedled with a little smirk, trying to peer at her through his swelling eye. “Come on, it didn’t work out so bad for ya, did it? You married that fancy judge, you got a kid… Not so bad, right?”

Lysa laughed. “Like that changes what you did.”

“Come on, Lys,” he whispered, trying to turn on whatever charm he possessed. “Come on, we had some nice times. It didn’t work out, but we had some nice times, right? Coney Island, that night under the boardwalk…?”

Lysa’s face twisted in agonized rage. “Coney Island,” she spat, and paced away from him. “Yeah, it was great. Too bad it didn’t mean anything to you.” Her hands were figeting with the gun now.

Dany and Asha gave each other a look, and started to inch closer to her.

“Lys, I never said that-“ he began, but she cut him off.

“YOU MADE A PLAY FOR MY MARRIED SISTER!” she shouted at him. “I should shoot you on principle, just for that!”

His eyes were darting between Lysa and the gun, and the two girls who were moving nearer to her. “Lysa, we were kids back then, it was the 80s for Chrissakes…”

“You phony-ass, fake-guinea, goon piece of shit!” She leveled the gun at him, and it looked like she’d at the very least fired one before. Dany could see the whites of Petey’s one eye that wasn’t swelling up. “You tried to kill my niece. You helped those people cover up my brother in law’s murder. You think I don’t know how shit plays out with you mobster jackoffs? You learn a few things being married to a judge, let me tell you. I let you leave here alive and it comes back tenfold at my niece. The odds you land in _my_ lap, out of all the people you could have run into… it can’t be coincidence. No way, Petey. Sorry, honey.”

There was a short, sharp, high-pitched whine as she squeezed the trigger.

Asha and Dany lunged at her.

Petey slumped down in his chair.

 

 

Arya picked up the phone.

“What’s going on?” Her voice was tense.

“We got a problem,” Asha’s voice came through the phone.

Arya frowned. “Talk to me.”

“Empress shot the guy.”

Arya cursed under her breath. “She shot him,” Arya told Sansa.

“Christ,” Sansa sighed. “Put her on speaker.” Arya did. “Asha, where is she now?” Sansa called out.

“Well, me and Dany jumped her,” Asha’s voice came thin through the phone. “We tried to stop her before she done it but… anyway, she’s coolin’ out in a chair now in the back room. We tied her up.”

“Okay… and what about him? Is he dead? Where’s he shot?”

“Well, she was aiming dead center in the chest but we jumped her so… looks like he took it in the ribs,” came Dany’s voice, “left side, kinda low. Might or might not have hit a lung or something, so… he’s not dead, but it’s not good. He’s bleeding a lot. We have to decide pretty fast what we’re gonna do with him, though. If we call an ambulance now, he might be salvageable.” An awkward pause. “Assuming that’s what we want to do.”

Sansa shook her head, running through an array of curses. “I don’t think he’s any good to me dead.”

“OK, but… then what about Empress?” came Asha’s voice after a moment. “I mean, we gonna spring her, we gonna leave her here for the cops to find? What about all that?”

Sansa sighed, running through a hundred scenarios in her head.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m just trying to work out what we do, here.” She hesitated a moment more, then said, “OK. Uncuff him. He’s shot in the chest, he’s not going anywhere. Is she awake?”

“No, we knocked her out.”

“OK. We still need him alive. The building is rented under Lysa’s name, I’m assuming, so it’s not like we can play stupid there. And if they come for a gunshot wound, you damn well believe they’re going to send a squad car. So this is what you do. You call 911, ok. I noticed an old pay phone bank at the corner when I was driving up, call them from there, do not ID yourself. You tell them you need a squad car and an ambulance. You tell them, you heard a lover’s quarrel or something going on, then you heard shots, and you’re very concerned.”

There was a silence as they thought the plan over. Sansa plunged on.

“Then you move Lysa, in her chair, out into the same room with him. Wait until you hear the sirens getting close. Then and only then, you untie her, and you guys slip out the back.”

Nobody had a better idea, so Asha finally agreed, “Solid plan, Babylon. We gonna meet you later or what?”

“For now, just go hang out somewhere. We’ll call you in a little bit. I’ve gotta figure out what the next move is.”

They hung up the phone. Arya was looking at her sister as if she was a stranger. A stranger she was impressed with, but also slightly afraid of. “You really gonna hang Aunt Lysa out to dry like this?”

Sansa shrugged. “She just shot a witness that we need. And… she’s essentially been running a gang for the last what, nine months?”

Arya was uncomfortable though, and persisted. “But what about the rest of us? We all _participated_ in a gang. Shouldn’t you be locking us up, too?”

She sighed. “Arya… look, you’re young, and you screwed up getting involved with that. Aunt Lysa knows better. I understand why you thought what you were doing was right, but… this isn’t even like that. She didn’t shoot him for my sake. She shot him because of a personal beef with him.”

Conflict was written across Arya’s face.

“And,” Sansa added, trying to comfort Arya, who was clearly feeling wrong about it all, “she’s pretty well-connected. She knows so many judges, so many lawyers… I mean, she made your B&E and vandalism arrest just… go away, but like... _away_ , away. You were picked up, but you were never even booked, did you realize that?”

Arya shook her head. After an awkward pause, Arya asked, “So, what now?”

“Well,” Sansa mused. “I have evidence of the cover-up. What I don’t have is evidence of who did it and why, apart from Bran’s phone call and whatever Jaime said to him.” She realized that she had not, until now, felt ready to look at the crime scene photos of her father’s body. “Once Petey shows up in the hospital, pretty much all hell is going to break loose. I’m probably going to have to be ready to make some arrests, so I damn well better have evidence for why I’m doing it.”

Sansa’s phone rang. It was Bree. She picked up.

“Baby, are you ok? What’s going on?”

Bree’s voice sounded exhausted, smaller than she was used to hearing it. “San, listen, don’t hang up… I have someone here who wants to talk to you… just… just listen to him, ok?”

There was a momentary silence, and then a man’s voice came through the phone, sounding nearly as tired as Bree’s. “Detective Stark?”

“Yes?” Her stomach tightened.

“This is Commissioner Mormont. I think you and I need to talk.”

“Yeah, I already had a talk this evening with a guy who tried to wrap a garrote wire around my throat. Can you imagine my reluctance?”

A long, uncomfortable pause. “Listen, that wasn’t my doing. But things look rather bad for you, you know? You’ve got a partner in the hospital, you’ve disappeared with a suspect, and—“

“And I’ve also got Petey Littlefinger’s ledgers that show how much money you’ve gotten from the Corratos over the last decade. So, things don’t really look so great for you either, at the moment.”

“So then, what’s your plan?” he challenged. “Come and arrest me?”

“Not exactly, sir.”

His voice became gentle, weary, the way her father’s did when she was getting into a lot of trouble. “Detective, I don’t know what you did to Littlefinger to get those ledgers, and I don’t want to know, at least not right now. But this isn’t leading you anywhere good. You’re Ned Stark’s daughter, I know that means you’d rather do things right if you can help it. Don’t you want to know what really happened to your father that night? So you can decide for yourself what the right thing is, now?”

Sansa paused. “And are you going to tell me that?”

“I’m going to _show_ you. Meet me at Midtown South and we’ll open up the evidence.”

“Alright,” Sansa replied. “I can be there in thirty minutes. But I’m leaving the ledgers, the testimony and everything else I’ve got with someone, and if I don’t check in with them, the whole lot of it is going public.”

Mormont grunted in assent. “Fair enough.”

They hung up.

She turned back to Arya, and handed her the stack of folders and a couple of bills out of her purse. “I need you to guard this stuff with your life. There’s some cab money if you want to go back to the warehouse or meet up with Dany and Asha. Call me in forty-five minutes. If I don’t pick up…” She paused, realizing that she wasn’t sure what to do if that happened.

She reached into her purse, and pulled out the small coaster that had Margaery’s number scribbled on it. “If I don’t answer, call her.” She drove away.

 

Arya called a car service.  Ten minutes, they said.  She strolled back to the rear of the building where they'd broken in, slipped back inside.  She found the shades and popped them on again.  Much better.


	34. Locker 338G

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa finally learns the whole truth, and decides what to do about it.

Sansa found Bree’s siren and popped it onto the roof. She’d told Mormont half an hour, but being able to cut through the traffic meant she was able to more or less speed there, and made the trip in about twenty minutes.

She got to her desk and took out the case folder. She took a breath, then flipped to the crime scene photos in the back. She wanted a moment with them before dealing with Mormont. After her stomach had settled down a little, she took it in, the way she was always good at doing. There was little blood. That shouldn’t have been surprising, since they’d decided the cause of death as a brain aneurysm due to blunt force trauma to the head. She let her eyes settle on the image, absorb the way he was lying, the car door hanging open, the broken bottle of Courvoisier with the red bow still on it ( _a gift from whom? He never drank cognac. Nobody who knew him would give him anything but a twelve year old scotch_ ), the coat crumpled beside him on the pavement.

The coat.

That wasn’t his coat.

At least, if it was his coat, it wasn’t one she recognized. Her father had had very simple, elegant tastes in clothing; the winter usually found him in his favorite overcoat, a charcoal grey Chesterfield with clean lines, a velvet collar and a single back vent. It was hard to tell in the picture but this looked more like a tweed hunting coat, light grey-brown, with dark, notched lapels and she could see one of the sleeves had some embellishment stitching on the cuffs. A very nice coat. Not his style, though.

“Ready, Detective?” came a voice from behind her.

Sansa jumped, then looked over her shoulder and found Commissioner Mormont looking down at her. His expression read as deeply exhausted, but also … something else. Impressed? Amused? She wasn’t sure.

“That’s not his coat,” she declared with unwavering certainty.

“You’re right,” he agreed.

“The video showing my dad leaving at 9:14 that night is wrong. It wasn’t him. It was Jaime, wearing his coat.”

He nodded again.

She looked at the picture again. “So, it was just… what, dumb bad luck that he happened to have parked in a spot that the cameras didn’t reach?”

Jorah Mormont nodded.

“So, why? Why would Jaime Lannister dirty his hands like that?”

Jorah shook his head. “Jaime Lannister isn’t exactly who you think he is. This wasn’t the way things were meant to end up.”

Sansa looked dubious. “So what was he doing there?”

Jorah sighed. “He went there to try and reason with your dad. About the Lyonsbank stories. He was concerned that his father would choose a less … savory route to deal with him than the legal one.”

“You mean Petey Littlefinger?”

“No. I mean the Stark family trusts held by Lyonsbank.”

She paused. “Yeah, Robb was worried about those too.”

“Well, Jaime didn’t want to see it go that way, and as a board member at the bank, he had access to certain information. He went to talk to your father, off book, off the record, about backing off before Tywin Lannister did real damage.”

Sansa snorted. “In other words, he was a blackmail messenger.”

Jorah shook his head. “No. Tywin didn’t know what he was doing. Jaime wasn’t even supposed to know that there was any discussion about this. He went to your dad, hoping he could work something out where everyone got to save face. His sister was well pissed at him for going behind everyone’s backs about it, I assure you.”

Sansa wasn’t buying it, but she let him go on. “So, let’s say he went with honorable intentions. Is that his booze, then?”

Jorah smiled. “How’d you know?”

“Because nobody who actually knew my father would have brought him that as a gift. Anyone who actually knew him knew he was exclusively a scotch drinker.” She eyed him for a moment. “So, he followed him down to the garage after this party, with this bottle of booze as a peace offering, I’m guessing? And then what happened?”

Jorah sighed. “Your father had the same initial reaction you did. He thought Jaime was blackmailing, not peacemaking. They were both half in the bag after this Christmas party, and when Jaime started trying to talk to him about it, your dad didn’t take it so well.”

Sansa’s mind raced as she stared at the photographs spread out in front of her.

“So it broke down to insults and then Jaime took a swing at him. They struggled a bit, your dad took a couple of hits in the face, managed to shove Jaime onto the ground, and decided that was his moment to get the hell out. He jumped in the car, Jaime tried to stop him from leaving and he got his hand slammed in the door. Pretty good, too.”

“His right hand,” Sansa ventured.

Jorah nodded.

“Slamming in a car door…. That’s not usually enough to require a partial amputation,” she remarked.

“It is if you don’t treat it. Couple of breaks, internal bleeding… gangrene doesn’t take all that long if you don’t get it taken care of.  He spent a few days, hiding out up at Tywin's place on the Cape with his busted hand, afraid that the injury would tie him back to the accident somehow.”

Sansa looked again at the pictures. The shoe scuffs on the cement. Not hard to believe they’d thrown a few punches.

“So he slammed the door on Jaime’s hand, then what?”

Jorah sighed. “He got back out of the car. To see if he was alright. Jaime had stumbled back, and he was crouched down over here –“ He pointed to a photo that was pulled back a little more, and she could see a row of three cement bollards, painted yellow, a few feet from the car. “—and he came over to try and help him up, not realizing how seriously he’d hurt Jaime’s hand. Jaime –still had his good hand, mind you— got a grip on your dad’s lapel when he leaned down, but your dad reached out and grabbed Jaime’s injured hand, and Jaime kicked his leg… just out of pain, it was just a reflexive reaction. And with some of his weight already pulling down on Ned, he ended up pulling him headfirst into the bollards.”

Sansa shook her head. “So, he basically did a Million Dollar Baby, is that about right?”

Jorah nodded.

Sansa shook her head. “Why didn’t they just do what normal fucking people do? Call an ambulance? Hire expensive lawyers to get Jaime off? Why put you through a cover-up? Why drag Clegane and Polliver and Karstark and Stone through it? Why force you to frame up Lommy?”

Jorah shrugged. “Because they could.” He sighed heavily. “Cersei Lannister knew Tommy was going to be running for Mayor, she couldn’t have that kind of a black mark. Accident or no, your uncle going down for manslaughter doesn’t look great.”

“A cover-up looks worse,” Sansa countered.

“Not if you don’t get caught. I don’t know how many she’s engineered in her day, but I think she just thought it would be one more.”

Sansa felt sick. “I want to see the coat.”

 

They went down to the evidence lockers. Jorah instructed the young cop on duty, “Open up locker 338G, please?”

The officer hesitated. “Uh, sir?”

“Do it.”

They followed him back into the rows, and Sansa remarked, “You know the locker number by memory?”

“I always remember where I bury a body,” Jorah replied hoarsely.

They opened up the plastic, and she looked quickly at the items scattered inside before pulling out the coat. Holding it in her hands now, she was entirely certain that it wasn’t her father’s. Even without forensics looking it over, she could see some blond hairs stuck to the velvet on the lapels. She turned out the pockets but found nothing much until she noticed a hole in the left one. She dug inside the lining of the coat and found a dog-eared, wallet-size photograph of a very young Cersei Lannister. As beautiful as she was now, she’d been stunning when she was younger. Sansa dropped it on the table with unhidden disdain.

She turned the coat over and found the large pocket inside. It still held a large, sealed, unmarked manila envelope. She popped the seal, and slid the thick packet of papers out.

Her phone rang. It was Arya, checking in. Five minutes late, but whatever. She answered. “Stark.”

“It’s me. You good, or do I need to call this person up?”

“No, I’m good. Check back with me in twenty.”

She hung up.

She turned the packet over, and started to leaf through it. Surely enough, there were rundowns on all of her family’s trusts with Lyonsbank, as well as printouts of a number of obliquely-worded emails from Tywin Lannister that were nonetheless clearly referring to items in the Stark family trusts and considering the ramifications of inflicting financial pain on them in various ways. “He was bringing this to show him, to prove he was telling the truth.”

Jorah nodded.

She wouldn’t have believed it a week ago, but she was standing here, alive, because Jaime had warned her brother about the deputy mayor's planned attempt on her life. The man wasn’t a killer.

“So, what now, sir?” she finally asked.

Jorah took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Well, that’s up to you. You could arrest Jaime with what you have right now, and he’d probably go away for a long time. And you’d bring me and the deputy mayor along with him. I don’t know if you want to collapse the power structure at the top of the city government, but you know, it’s up to you.”

Sansa looked at him for a long moment. “Sir, why are you telling me the truth about this now?”

“Because I’m hoping we can make a deal. You have what you need now to bring down Jaime and Cersei too. But if you can find a way to leave me out of it, I’d be much obliged.”

Sansa shook her head. “I don’t think I believe you. Maggie Tyrell had me moved here so that I could work on this case. You had to know she was doing it. You had to know I would have found all this sooner or later. Why’d you let her move me?”

Jorah smiled, weary beyond measure, and replied, “I told myself at first it was because it would attract suspicion if I tried to block it.”

“You don’t want anything more to do with these people, do you, sir.”

“I suppose not.”

“You know there’s no way I can bring them down for this without involving you, sir.”

“Of course. Not without playing with the evidence.”

“Sorry, sir. No deal. I’m not playing with any evidence.”

Jorah smiled. “Of course, technically, you’re not supposed to be working this case, and if you go forward with these arrests, you’re going to find yourself in a bit of trouble for having done so.”

“Suspension?”

“Maybe.”

“That about it?”

“Probably.”

Sansa thought it over. She packed everything back into the bag, tucked it under her arm, and started toward the door.

“Detective,” he called after her, his voice echoing off the pale green cinder block walls. “What have you decided?”

“I think I’m going to call an old friend,” she called over her shoulder as she walked away.

 

When she called Maggie Tyrell, and went through the particulars of what she’d learned, she was disappointed to find that the young, dynamic D.A. was initially not particularly interested in pursuing prosecutions on it.  Maggie Tyrell didn’t particularly like Cersei Lannister, but she wasn’t a target of her prosecutorial wrath, and without the motive tying Ned’s death to Lyonsbank, it didn't help move that whole line of inquiry forward.  Unless Sansa decided to miraculously lose track of the envelope, which she wasn't about to do.  And Maggie had less than no interest in taking down Jorah Mormont, who was, in her estimation, probably the best Commissioner that the city had had in the last 25 years.

Sansa was unimpressed. “Someone tried to kill me tonight because I was investigating this. Don’t you think your office ought to be having a look at it?”

Maggie Tyrell was circumspect. “Well, put all your evidence together, and let’s meet for lunch tomorrow and we can look at it.”

Sansa hung up, furious. She wasn’t waiting for lunch tomorrow.

 

She called Robb, and quickly told him everything.

“It’s no good,” he said without hesitation. “Too much Lyonsbank crash-related stuff baked into this whole thing, we can’t touch it.” He paused for a moment. “But you know what? I think I know who can.”

Sansa knew who he meant.

She knew she had to have that asshole’s phone number somewhere.


	35. Qualified Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Sansa's decision.

It didn’t matter that StarkMedia’s publications couldn’t touch the story. Once the Borough Record ran it, it bloomed across the city in a matter of hours and become a national media feeding frenzy in days.

The list of people unhappy with Detective Stark was long. Maggie Tyrell didn’t particularly want to touch Jorah Mormont, and the evidence pointing away from Lyonsbank as a motive for Ned Stark’s death didn’t fit in with her long game. Jorah himself was half relieved that she had not wanted to make a deal with him; he was sick of the lying and cover-ups. But he still was less than pleased with the consequences that would unfold. Cersei Lannister, looking gorgeous even as she was frogmarched to the police precinct, was ready to unleash hell. Unfortunately, “hell” was lying in a hospital in Brooklyn after having been shot point-blank by Lysa Arryn, and was not going to be unleashed on anything anytime soon. The Mayor was frustrated and suddenly unmoored; he was losing his police commissioner and his deputy mayor in one fell swoop, and not only that, his mother was being arrested and charged with things that he’d always known she was capable of, but had been studiously avoiding thinking about for his entire adult life.  This was exactly the kind of PR disaster she'd been the one to field, but since his sister was in town and happened to be a crisis management specialist, and this was clearly a crisis, she was able to jump in and help his team craft a response. 

Lysa Arryn, the Detective’s emotionally unstable aunt, was also sitting in a cell, dully weathering a verbal barrage from her sister, who was fit to be tied over what she’d gotten Arya involved in, but who was (of course) hiring the best defense lawyer in the state anyway.

At least Hyle Hunt wasn’t angry. Sansa had made his career. Not that she’d wanted to, but it was the best move at the time. “Congratulations,” she’d said, “now you’re a journalist. Go get a job at a respectable paper, will you?”

Maggie Tyrell was shrewd enough to leverage the situation anyhow. She promised Cersei leniency, light charges, and substantial delays including a grand jury proceeding, in exchange for her cooperation on nailing Lyonsbank. Cersei, bearing decades of resentment towards her father, and seeing the evidence against herself on top of it, felt cornered at first, but decided in the end that selling Tywin up the river was a small price to pay, as long as the D.A.’s offer applied to her brother as well. Goddamn Jaime, he’d gotten wobbly on her. She’d done it all for him, and he’d broken in the end.

Jaime Lannister disappeared for a little while but eventually was caught and faced involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy charges. Maggie Tyrell was good on her word, and made arrangements with a judge to sentence him to home incarceration with an ankle bracelet. He’d hate it, but it wasn’t jail.

Lysa Arryn was still connected enough that she managed to stay out of trouble, though it probably helped that Sansa moved things along. Nobody knew what the young detective said to Petey Littlefinger when she visited him in the hospital, but when he was well enough to talk to the cops, he was quick to confirm that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding. He and Lysa were just old friends, she’d been admiring his piece, and it went off in her hands.

And as something of a bonus, Lysa found herself oddly compelled by the lady lawyer Catelyn had hired. Selyse Florent was a grim woman with no sense of humor that anyone was aware of, but she’d been a partner at Johnny Cochran’s firm for ten years before striking out on her own, and she moved and spoke with an air of “don't fuck with me.” Lysa felt somehow disinclined to complain about spending hours on end with this pale, serious divorcee.

The warehouse lease was terminated and the bikes inside it liquidated. Phaedra’s was, for all intents, dissolved. The Mormont girls started their own security firm, offering bodyguard services. They also offered pro-bono “walk-home” services at the colleges on the weekends, so that girls could feel safe going home at night.

Ygritte and Asha stayed together for a little while longer, but in the end, Asha decided to go back to Kingston. Her father be damned, she had real charisma and toughness and more of a shot at getting elected at anything than her useless brother, and the more Ygritte pressed her about it, the more she realized that she couldn’t hide from what she was really meant to be doing. Ygritte considered going back with her, but it didn’t make sense. “Me and me pale arse running ‘round Jamaica?” she’d joked, shaking her head.

Obara went back to the kickboxing circuit and for the most part, lost contact with Arya and Dany except when she and Arya faced each other in tournaments. Before that happened though, she came to them with a yellow manila envelope that felt relatively thick, and handed it to Dany. “What’s this?” Dany had asked, brow furrowed with suspicion. “My dad called in a favor for me,” Obara answered. “It’s about your parents.”  Fucking Obara had played down her dad's Mossad connections all this time, but she'd been able to pull something unexpected out of the hat.  Dany wouldn’t be ready to open it for a long while, but there was nothing she could say to Obara that would adequately express her gratitude. She would finally be able to know the truth.

Arya and Dany got married, shortly after Lysa’s trial, and they found themselves a modest place in Brooklyn. After a lot of wavering and hesitation, Arya went on meds for ADHD, and while it didn’t completely fix everything, she found herself able to think more clearly. She found she needed less thrill-seeking, and less harsh sensory experiences, to feel grounded (although she kept at the kickboxing, because it was one thing she was truly good at). She went to CUNY for a pre-law program, and performed well enough to satisfy the requirements of the family’s trust, so that she could keep the stipend that she’d never availed herself of until now.

Bran and Meera married too, and Meera moved into the Stark brownstone. Bran’s writing finally culminated in a collection of poetry which Meera scrupulously edited for him, and which enjoyed a bit of attention once he self-published, and eventually got picked up by a small poetry imprint at Random House. Meera began writing too, and they were passionate critics and rabid defenders of each others’ work.

Robb and Jin had a little boy, and named him Ned. Little Ned was lucky; he grew up surrounded by aunts and uncles who all loved him, and all would teach him different things; Aunt Arya and Aunt Dany would teach him to throw a punch, Uncle Bran would teach him how to write, Aunt Sansa would take him to museums and teach him about current events. Catelyn was thrilled to take on grandparenting duties, and she taught little Ned how to paint and work with clay, and she would eventually get him his first bicycle and teach him to ride it.

Sansa got a slight reprimand for her under the table investigation, but transferred back to Queens and tried to keep doing police work; it wasn’t like before, though. She’d tried to avoid the entire corruption story becoming about her, but it was unavoidable, and in the end, it was more fame than she wanted.

She moved in with Bree and they shared their lives, their bed, and Bree’s asshole cat. At breakfast one morning, Bree remarked as Sansa gazed into her coffee, “You’ve been sullen for ages now. You want to talk about it?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I just… I mean, Mormont lost his job, the deputy mayor lost her job and she’s probably going to face some house incarceration like her brother, and… I mean, it looks like the DA is going to be able to nail Tywin Lannister and at least a couple of people at Lyonsbank for their role in the crash, and maybe some money laundering too…” She trailed off.

“But you’re not satisfied,” Bree supplied.

Sansa shrugged. “It’s hard to get powerful people to pay for what they do. The Lannisters, Mormont, they probably won’t do more than a token penance for what they did. Littlefinger gets off the hook. The Corratos won’t even be touched, probably.  I let my sister off the hook for crimes I knew she was committing, and I intimidated a victim –granted, a sleazebag who tried to kill me, but still– a shooting victim, to get my aunt out of trouble and keep him alive and available to testify for what I needed him for.  So where do I even get off being moralistic about any of it, you know?  I know the truth about my dad now, which is good, I guess… But…”

Bree nodded and placed a large hand over Sansa’s on the table.

“It feels hollow, is all,” Sansa sighed. “I don’t know if any of this qualifies as justice.”

“Careful,” Bree warned with a little smirk. “You’re starting to sound like Arya.”

Sansa sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if she was wrong after all.” She clicked on the local news channel and saw Arya and Dany, in their matching rainbow hijabs, speaking at a rally for queer Muslims in New York.

 

A week later, she went to Selmy and turned in her badge and gun. He wasn’t happy about it, but he understood.

She called Robb at StarkMedia. There was a desk at Fast Forward with her name on it.

 

____________________________

 

_“The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.”_

_–Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig_


End file.
